Free The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys

wrists in soapy water. But I am easily defined, I think. Longing . The word I found today comes back with such force I sway against the sink. I almost tell Jane about that garden. I actually open my mouth to tell her, and then I shut it again. What would I tell her? What would I say? I don’t really know what to make of it myself. Then I realize what I felt when I found that garden this afternoon. That I was the first person to see it aside from the person or people who made it. And that it was meant for me and me alone to find. I do not want to share it with anyone, even Jane.
    “What?” says Jane. She has been watching me, can tell I was on the verge of speaking.
    “Were you close to your cousin?” I lift a heavy plate from the warm water and heft it into the dish rack. It is all I can think of to say. When all else fails, ask a question.
    “When Colin and I were small,” says Jane, “we were very close. Constant companions. Inseparable. All that rot you’ve ever read about a close family, that was us.” She swings down off the worktop, grabs a towel from the handle of the range, and starts to dry the dishes from the rack.
    “What happened?” I ask.
    “We grew up.” Jane opens the cupboard above her head and clatters the dry bowls into it. “This is what I know. I was close to Colin. Then I wasn’t. Then, when he was lying in the hospital dying, I was close to him again. The funny thing was that I recognized him in his pain, recognized that little boy from when we were young and the equivalent of in love with each other. It was his screaming that did it. His screaming brought him back to me.” Jane leans against the worktop. “And then he left me for good,” she says. “In the moment he returned, he left.”
    I’m afraid she is going to start to cry again, but she doesn’t, just stands against the worktop, the damp tea towel slung over her shoulder. “This is what I know,” she says again. “Because I was close to Colin when we were young, because I had the example of that, I knew how to love. I knew what intimacy was and I wanted it. Because of Colin, I knew about love.”
    “And then there was Andrew,” I say.
    “Yes, Andrew.” Jane takes a glass from the rack and wipes it dry. “Andrew is missing. But missing isn’t dead.”
    I think of Mrs. Woolf, and the hasty way her death has been anticipated. “I know,” I say. “Missing isn’t even lost. It just means someone isn’t where they’re expected to be.”
    “Exactly.”
    “And where is Andrew expected to be?”
    “Malta. He was on his way there.” Jane abandons the wet tea towel and reaches for a cigarette. “He’s RAF,” she explains. “He was flying a mission to an aerodrome in Malta and his plane disappeared somewhere over the Mediterranean. But the thing is this—” Jane lights her cigarette. I’m not looking at her, but out of the corner of my eye I can see the jumpy match. Her hands are shaking again. I hear her inhale deeply. “The thing is this, Gwen. No wreckage was found. There were six men in that Wellington. No wreckage. No bodies. And he’s ditched before and survived. And the Mediterranean’s warm. And he’s a good swimmer.”
    I let the water out of the sink. There’s a great sucking sound as it disappears down the drain. “Those are good facts,” I say. “Hang on to them.”
    The last of the water leaves the sink and I see the one small plate lying stranded on the bottom of the porcelain. It was easily missed. I pick it up carefully and put it gently in the rack.

13
     
    I move my bed directly underneath the timbered arch in my room. I lie there, with the weight of The Genus Rosa pinning me to the mattress, and I imagine Raley’s fiery bower overhead. Longing, I think. Longing . Sometimes I think I might die of it.
    Jane has had someone to long for, someone to love. She can probably still remember the weight of him on top of her. But maybe that’s not true either; maybe the physical presence of