So the giants of the family, the great Hawk-moths, were enticed with limes for the Lime Hawk, pines for the Pine Hawk, poplars and aspen for the Poplar Hawk, and for the Privet Hawks, privet, ash and lilac. The eleven acres of meadow that ran from the gardens to the brook were assiduously laid out for grass lovers like the Ermines and The Drinker, whose black hairy caterpillars could easily be heard on warmer spring mornings noisily sucking the dew off the tall grasses. By the brook, bog plants were introduced to feed the Gold Spot and The Shark, willows were given over to the Kittens and the Puss, while copses and pockets of woodland, glades of ancient beech, elm and oak held the homes of the Lobster and the Scalloped Hazel, the Peppered and the Goat. Orchards of plums and pears were nurtured, not for their fruit but for the leaves that tempted caterpillars of the Grey Dagger, the Magpie and other fruit-tree lovers, and up on the ridge to the north you’d have found the brightly striped orange-and-black Cinnabar caterpillars in their thousands, and the Lappet, Yellow-tail, Sallow and Angle Shades flitting and fluctuating over willowherb and ragwort, bindweed and dock in the warmth of their short summer lives.
The fields were left wild and unkempt, smothered with weeds, and hedgerows a mess with sallow and bedstraw, brambles and sloe. A disgrace to a farmer but a haven for those species like the Prominents, the Tussock and the Eggars, whose ebbing existence is greatly worried by the taming of the countryside. And the suburban garden species were not forgotten. The formal terraces to the south were sculpted and manicured with lilac, buddleia and sweet-scented tobacco, urns of Mediterranean geranium and oleander, petunia and fuchsia, vine and balsam, all designed in the hope of sighting the Garden Tiger, the Elephant Hawk, the Dot, the Dark Dagger or the extensive tongue of the Convolvulus stealing nectar from the pink-tinged trumpets of the plant after which it is named. Even that rampant creeper outside my bedroom window, which in autumn paints the south wall a deep, aristocratic red, was planted primarily in the hope of encouraging the elusive Death’s-head Hawk.
“Can I get in, darling?” Vivien asks. “I’m chilly.”
I nod. “If you like.”
“I suppose it’s really my bed too,” she says, and I wince as she draws the sheets and blankets right back, pulling them loose from the sides of the bed to get in. It doesn’t make an awful lot of difference now because, to be honest, it’s just as difficult to straighten one part of the bed as it is to start over and do the whole thing again. The sheets are held to the blanket with safety pins along the top and have to be tucked in in a very particular way at the bottom. I hate it when they go saggy, when you can kick your foot at the bottom of the bed and not feel any resistance because they’re loose. I’d probably have found myself taking off all the bedclothes and starting from scratch anyway. It takes fifty-five minutes and there’s a definite method to it. I usually get away with doing it once a fortnight when I wash the sheets. I know what a bore it is so when I go to bed each night I make sure to slip between the sheets without drawing them back any more than is absolutely necessary. Once I’m in, and I’ve checked the pressure of them all over, I lie very still. In the morning when I get out—also very carefully—the bed hardly looks slept in at all.
I’d never have said no to Vivien getting into bed with me, not when she offers that sort of closeness. When we were young, she would often crawl in with me if she was sad or lonely or frightened of the wind, and things she needed to discuss had a habit of coming to her in the middle of the night, things that could never wait until morning. Back then I felt honored, and now, besides the tedium of straightening the sheets, I can’t help feeling the same. Vivi always had a wonderful way of making me feel special by assuming that her world and mine were inherently each other’s, without any barriers between them.
“Ginny and I are going for a walk,” she used to announce, without asking me first, but it made me feel as if I’d been specially selected, out of a world full of people, to go for a walk with her.
So when Vivien asks if she can get into my bed, the privilege is all mine. She snuggles down on what used to be Maud’s side, tucking her body into a ball, like the girl she used to be. Her head is resting on the upper part of her arm while her hand stretches up and her fingers feel their way childishly along the panels of Gothic tracery carved into the headboard behind her, reading it like a blind man would. For a moment she is far away in thought with her fingers. I can’t help thinking that every minute I have with her, the less I see the old woman who arrived on my doorstep yesterday and the more I see the little girl I’ve always adored.
I study her lying next to me. It is her eyes that are most changed. Once they were a strong bright blue, scattered with natural shards of silver that made them sparkle as bright and vivacious and hypnotic as the girl herself. But now they’re faded to a weak gray-blue, dulled by the life they’ve seen.
“Is anyone I know left in the village?” she asks finally.
“No, I don’t think so. Michael’s still here of course, still in the Stables.”
“Well, he obviously doesn’t do the gardening,” she says, referring to the mass of tangled undergrowth and wild jungle that our once manicured terraces and meadows had become.
“No. He hires out those big tents in the peach houses for parties and he’s made a fortune.”
“He bought our glasshouses?”
“Years ago, with the Stables and the bit of land by the lower spinney. He stores the marquees in them.” Vivien’s eyes are shut, the lids flicker restlessly as she listens. “A few years ago he offered to buy this house and let me live in the Stables.”
She opens her eyes quickly, bright thoughts rousing a remnant sparkle. “Swap with the gardener, darling? What is the world coming to?” She laughs. “Would you have to do the gardening too?”
I tell her that Charlotte Davis’s daughter, Eileen, is now living in Willow Cottage. Michael told me she came back a few years ago, after her mother died. “I haven’t seen her, though. Do you remember the Davises?” I ask.
“Yes, of course,” she says, as she props up her head on an elbow. “Mrs. Davis and her beloved carthorses. What were their names?”
“Alice and Rebecca.”
“Alice and Rebecca.” She sighs. “That’s right. Your tea’s gone cold, darling.”
“Never mind,” I reply ruefully—but, to tell you the truth, I’d never have drunk it. It’s far too milky and it’s been spilt on the saucer. My tea needs to be the exact mix of strength and color, and there’s a definite method to that.
Chapter 7
Breakfast
Vivien leaves my bedroom and I start the routine that gets me up and dressed. Then I take the cup and saucer to my bathroom and pour the cold tea into the washbasin. I manage to tip it directly down the plug hole without getting a drop on the white porcelain, and I feel satisfied to have spared myself the bother of rinsing it.
When I get down to the kitchen Vivien’s not there, but a breakfast place has been laid for me at the table, with a couple of pieces of cold toast propped up against the sugar bowl. The butter and jam are out, and there’s an egg in an eggcup with the egg toppers by its side. Is this what Vivien had for breakfast? I go to the cupboard to get my cornflakes and a bowl, but even as I sit down I’m not the least bit hungry.