Free The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys Page B

are meant to be doing all this agricultural production for the war effort, and have to stop myself thinking that it is just for our own survival. It appears that everyone feels much the same way. Our food , we say to one another. Our potatoes. When our harvest is ready.
    In a day or so, when the kitchen garden is fully planted, the girls are to move on and prepare the South and North gardens for potatoes. After the land is cleared it will have to be ploughed. There is no evidence of a tractor on the property. Perhaps it broke, or was loaned out to a neighbouring farm. But there is an old plough in the barn, and when the time comes, Jane has assured us the horses can be relied upon to pull it.
    While the girls are busy in the kitchen garden, I sneak out to work in the hidden garden. In just under a week I have made great progress with it. I have cleared out the insulating layer of nettles that was covering the whole bed, and I have had a good look at what is underneath.
    The garden has been purposefully planted. I can tell this immediately from the balance of flowers already in bloom and those that have yet to show themselves. Until I can work out the meaning of everything, I am making my way very methodically up the bed from the anemones I first discovered. I am cutting back plants, trying both to account for natural growth and not slaughter them entirely, and to tidy their shapes so that no one plant is completely dominated by another.
    I work most of the day in the hidden garden. I have told no one of this place, pretend to the others that I am roaming the estate looking for suitable planting areas. Sometimes I say I am working in the orchard, since it is on the other side of the wall, and if I am spotted, it will be where I am spotted.
    Work stops for the day by five o’clock. In the two hours before dinner the girls have baths or sit outside, talking or writing letters. After dinner it has become customary to gather in the room with the wireless and listen to the nightly broadcast. I think we do this partially to remember that there is a war on and that this is the reason we are here.
    Tonight is Saturday night. It is the first dance with the Canadian soldiers up at the house. There is great excitement in the halls after dinner as the girls prepare themselves for the evening. I can hear them rushing in and out of each other’s rooms as I stand at the window in mine.
    “Aren’t you going?” It’s Jane, at the door of my bedroom.
    “Yes, I’m going.”
    “But you’re still all grubby from crawling through muddy ditches, or whatever it is you do in the day.” Jane comes into my room. “It still stinks in here,” she says, sitting down on my bed and lighting a cigarette. “The least you could do for all those eager lads is to put on a clean jersey.”
    “But I’m not good at this sort of thing.” I had actually been thinking of not going to the dance at all, until I realized that I needed to make a visit to the estate house and the dance would provide a good cover for my true intentions.
    “Not good at what? Dressing? Or life?” Jane flops backwards on my bed and there’s a solid thump as her head hits The Genus Rosa . I had fallen asleep last night with it in the bed with me and had forgotten to remove it this morning.
    “God,” says Jane, putting a hand to her head. “What do you have in here? Souvenirs from the garden? A few stones from the field?”
    “Sorry,” I say, and slide the one volume of The Genus Rosa away from her before she can get a good look at it. “Let me change. I’ll meet you downstairs.” I don’t want to be asked or to have to answer any questions about Miss Willmott’s weighty botanical nemesis. “I’ll just be a few minutes. Please.”
    “A few minutes,” repeats Jane. She gets up from the bed, still rubbing her head. “Don’t change your mind, Gwen. Don’t let me suffer that moony pack of puppies alone.”
    I don’t change my mind. I put on a clean jumper, as