Peculiar Ground - Lucy Hughes-Hallett

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with the inconvenient patches of infertile ground, whether boggy or parched, which threatened to interrupt my lines of planting, then I would pull out the portfolio in which the secret garden’s plans were stored. I have heard of an architect, who when at work on a palace, built himself a flimsy house of cards for his recreation. So I, worn out by the consideration of trenches and drains, would play at designing this sylvan enclave, barely the size of a tennis court. Surrounded by woodland trees, it would show like a fairy’s bower. There would be a pond, fed by a stream, and paved walks on which my Lady could tread with ease. The plants would be chosen for their fragrance, and for the daintiness of their blooms. My Lady is small. I had sometimes to remind myself that she is nonetheless a grown woman, as I found myself designing a garden in miniature, a plot as pretty as a Persian rug on which a child could play among tiny tufted flowers.

      There I was today with Cecily. There my life swung around, as a shutter upon a hinge.

      *

      The boy’s funeral took place this morning. Afterwards, I was abroad until late. When I returned to the great house, I found it a peopled darkness. My Lord and Lady kept to their rooms. The paucity of candles signified mourning, but the sumptuously dressed people still thronging the state rooms talked with an animation that shocked me. I am not censorious of elegancies of appearance – such frivolities are too slight to merit moralising upon them. But there is something brazen about the contrast between the blackness of mourning garb and the vanity of adorning the dreary cloth with black lace and glinting jet, or of wearing an inky bodice cut low as that of a courtesan out to snaffle herself a king.

      The funeral feast was still upon the table, and a cabal of ancient gentlemen sat over it, exchanging lugubrious reminiscences as the wine went round. I profited by the strange disruptedness of the household, to dine informally, setting myself alongside this chorus of old vultures, and accepting a dish of venison brought to me by a footman who seemed quite done in by weeping. His bleary eyes and puffed face hauled my mind back to the scenes of the morning. The children gazing at their brother’s catafalque, their faces grey as though they saw it seethe with worms. The rector, his surplice probably unworn since the late Lord Woldingham went out, fumbling with a ring that had snarled itself in the redundant flurry of lace about his wrists. My Lady swaying like an ill-propped effigy. Choirboys with censers sending up fumes of music and incense together. An awful ache in the throat, as though to draw breath in that gilded chapel were to risk suffocation.

      *

      I have reached the sanctuary of my room at last, much torn about and bewildered. I will not write more tonight. I have been detained by events that have so puzzled me I am not yet ready to set them down. I have been abominably ill-treated. I am half-minded to depart this place tomorrow.

      *

      This morning a maid brought me a letter from Cecily. She has asked me to destroy it, but first I will make a digest of it in this journal, which I believe is secure. No one in this household has any wish to delve into the secret thoughts of Norris the landskip man.

      I have been culpably ignorant of the community in which I temporarily dwell.

      We have all become accustomed to suppressing our curiosity. Just as among felons in a gaol it is held to be discourteous to enquire for what heinous deed one’s companion is condemned, so we citizens of this unhappy country have learnt to close our eyes and ears to the vexed histories of our fellows.

      We do so at peril to our humanity. To be inquisitive may be dangerous, but to be wilfully blind is cruel. I had no inkling, before, of the consequences to humankind of the grand schemes my Lord and I have been elaborating.

      Cecily’s prologue can be rendered in brief. She makes no allusion to what transpired between us in the secret garden. Instead she apologises for having involved me in matters that may prove troublesome. She regrets her failure to confide in me earlier. She explains that our fortuitous meeting yesterday, and its sequel, have taken me so far into a tangle of secrets that she feels it is her duty to help me understand them. Here I stand back. Let her continue in her own words.

      ‘My mother and I are of the dissenting party. There. You already deduced as much. For all that I know, you may be of our mind. Or perhaps you find us stiff-necked and perverse. I think, though, that you would not do us unnecessary harm.

      ‘When we encountered you yesterday we were carrying beribboned baskets, as though stepping out for our pleasure, in quest of spring flowers. We often do so. My cousin’s men are accustomed to seeing us bearing home primrose plants nestled in damp moss.

      ‘You, though, may have wondered what might have induced my mother to venture so far abroad. At the same hour on the previous day she had returned to Wood Manor, exhausted by the effort of sustaining her part in the funeral. Nonetheless she insisted on sallying out.

      ‘I had not intended to invite you to accompany us to the meeting-house, but my mother’s sudden weakness rendered your assistance most welcome.

      ‘I believe that you were amazed when you saw such a numerous congregation, and began to learn how such a gathering has come to be a regular occurrence in these woods.’

      Here I resume the thread. Cecily is right. I was amazed.

      When I awoke yesterday I had not slept easy. My night-time musings were delicious, but not restful.

      The morning at my desk was unproductive. The house was sombre. Black cloth draped the looking-glasses, and hung in ugly festoons over the long windows. I continued, because I had not been ordered to desist, to plan for happier times. I was puzzling over the design for a stage al fresco.

      My Lord, until fate smote him so cruelly, had been amusing himself with plans for masques and ballets to be performed on summer evenings in the fan-shaped hollow, so like an ancient amphitheatre, which closes the vista across the great lawn. He has asked me to consider it, and I took delight in the task. Narrow terraces, sustained by stone walls, will be planted in spring with rare tulips. In high summer the bulbs will be digged up, and mats laid down, with cushions upon them. My Lord’s friends, gorgeously dressed, will be ranged along the terraces like Chinese porcelain displayed upon ledges.

      I was planning the pergola that will back the stage. My sketches are attractive, but I was vexed by some technical matters. More seriously, I felt uncertain for whom I laboured. Who now in this house thinks of plays and players? I asked a servant to bring me a bite to eat and, fortified with ale and cold mutton, I was glad to go forth into the park.

      There I met the two ladies of Wood Manor. I cannot pretend that I had been unaware that I might intercept their walk, nor that that consideration had not been chief among my motives for walking out. (See how a lover’s bashfulness contorts my syntax.)

      As I came upon them it was evident that Lady Harriet was fatigued. I took her basket from her and gave her my arm as far as a fallen oak that made an adequate, if scarcely luxurious, seat. I offered to return to the house to ask for conveyance home for them. But Lady Harriet insisted that she would soon be rested and would not disappoint ‘the brethren’.

      To give the ladies time to recover themselves I explained what I have planned for the western end of the park, over which, from our makeshift seat, we enjoyed a fine prospect. I talked of groves of the balsamic poplar, whose myrrh will fill the park with celestial odours, and of the fallow deer (some dozen of whom were grazing in our eye-line) whom I would have banished for the protection of my stripling beeches, but on the retention of which Lord Woldingham has set his heart. He has even sent abroad for a pair of albinos in the hope of breeding a race of white harts. Animal, vegetable, mineral. He favours the first; I the second; Mr Rose the third. Despite his name, the architect thinks only of stone and of water.

      The course of the wall (our triumvirate’s joint venture) in this quarter is now partially cleared. Where soon there will be a sturdy barrier there is now a vacancy, a strip of no-grass, no-brambles, no-bracken, no-trees. In my mind’s eye the wall is already handsomely there, its stone the colour of a breadcrust, its solidity giving definition to the park as a fine frame does to a picture. To the others, I suppose, the band of raw and rutted earth must have looked as shocking as a wound.

      After

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