Nemaiza
Stories & Illustrations
The Greenhouse
My love is not always here. He comes and goes with the stars and the breeze. In his absence, I lie alone in the ruins of my home and pass the hours staring up at the sky through what panes of glass still remain between its ornate steel bones. In his presence, I lie there still, unmoving, but happy knowing he is beside me looking at the same sky.
Around us, the greenhouse brims with ivy and moss. Honeysuckle grows in patches of light. The orchard outside has crept in, roots from untended apples and plums pushing through the cracks in the cobbled floor. Decay is a word that flits across my mind often, and yet to me the conservatory is just as full of life as it was in the days of its human-tended glory. The flowers hum with the song of the bees. Birds flit through empty windows and hop among the weeds. They fill the place with their idle chatter. In my low state, I can hear the quiet splashing in the central pond beside me, frogs and newts making their home in the shadow of a duckweed blanket.
The sun still pours in light into this heavenly place. I feel its warmth in my pale skin, through the folds of my once-white gown that is now grey with age. It dances off the forms of my sisters, both still standing tall on their plinths. Clementine resides beneath the spot where rainwater likes to gather on the roof. The regular, rhythmic dripping has worn smother her arm and left a growing depression in her wrest. Hyacinth, surrounded by her namesake, is all but hidden by floor-length veil of ivy.
When the sun sets and the moon takes up her place in the sky and fills the greenhouse with her pale blue light, the cooler air she brings is welcome. A blanket of moss protects me from the chill. It serves me well in the winter months when white becomes the dominant colour and snow drifts in waves across the floor. In those days, I do not hear a sound from the pond. The water freezes over. For a while, it seems Time itself has stopped.
My love comes when he can. I have learnt not to fear his absences, for I know however long they may be, he will always come. The first time he visited, his footsteps were quick and light, and he found joy in scampering around the room. Later, he was more reserved, more respectful of our home. He tried to fight back against the encroachment of the unwieldy foliage. The attempt did not last long, and eventually his visits turned to him lying on the ground beside me for hours, staring up at the same sky I saw, and describing it in ways I never could. Once, he lay so close that his arm brushed mine and I felt the human warmth of him. Had my stone heart been made to beat, it would have stumbled then. That was the one time he touched me.
Now it has been many suns since I last saw his blue eyes and bearded face. My ears prick up at the sound of approaching footsteps – not his. These are too light. The pitter patter is accompanied by the laughter of young girls. I still remember that sound from my own youth. I see them skip over me, their shadows dancing along behind and darkening my face. Slower footsteps approach, then two voices; one that of a woman, the other I recognise. My love has returned.
I wait to feel him beside me, but he does not come. Instead, strong hands slip under my figure and raise me from the ground. I see my plinth ahead and am set back upon it, turned to face the green space and the pond and the young family exploring my home. The two workmen who moved me now tend to my sisters. Hyacinth’s ivy veil is pulled back and I see her face for the first time in years. The roof above Clementine’s head is patched up. New glass is fitted into all the empty spaces.
Over a few short weeks, the greenhouse is returned to its former glory. My love and his family visit almost every day. When I see my home reborn, and him standing within it, I cannot distinguish my joy from my sorrow.
Part Two
He has found another love. A better love. He still visits the greenhouse, still passes time trimming back the greenery so that it cannot reclaim my home, but she is with him more often than not. It was painful at first. I longed to turn my face away whenever they exchanged smiles across the raised pond or embraced half-way through the day’s work.
Now, I am happy for the both of them. One warm evening, I was even surprised to find myself pleased to see her step into the greenhouse with her girls. I could never have borne him children. Where her womb is flesh and blood, mine is solid stone.
The girls are beautiful. When the weather is fine, they run amok in the greenhouse or take turns rolling down the sloping lawn outside – all the cedars bar one have been cut down and now I can see all the way up to the big house through the glass wall. When the downpour comes and catches the girls at play, they will sooner run to my home for shelter, their breath alight with giggles, than head for that redbrick giant on the hill.
Some days I do not see them at all. A whole week will go by without a visit, as if they might lead other lives beyond the confines of my glass world. I do not mind so much. My sisters, Clementine and Hyacinth, are with me. We have the souls of the wild to keep us company. A fox from the wood has passed through many an evening. Sometimes he rests his forepaws on the lip of the pond and stands like that for hours in the night. It is hard to say whether he watches the koi, or his own reflection.
Birds fly in and out all day. They nest in the eaves and on the high ledges and fill the glass house with song. It is beautiful. My home feels reborn. But as the days between mortal visits lengthen, I cannot stop the rising floodwaters of anxiety in my chest – the fear that we may have seen them for the last time and not known it.
It was not so awful when the house’s previous owners left. We didn’t know until much later, once the weeds grew thick and cracked the floor, and no one came to scold the boys who threw stones through half the windows. That was a gradual realisation of abandonment. We did not know it was happening until long after it had already come to pass. If our new family were to leave, though, I do not think I would be able to keep my heart from breaking.
Today a magpie comes to pay his respects. He hops up to the pond and struts about on the stone rim, watching the fish. Sunlight catches the green and purple sheen of his dark feathers. I know the custom – to see a magpie alone is an ill omen. You must bow and enquire after the health of his family to negate the effects. But my legs are too stiff. The alarm kindles a flame in my chest.
It is the younger girl, Marianne, who shoos him away. She comes alone from the house to play pretend at being a princess in her royal garden. The game never fails to make me smile and soon the distress at the magpie’s visit ebbs away. She lays a gift of sunflowers at my feet as a token of friendship. I watch her dancing about the room, skirts swishing, a song in her heart and the brightest smile on her sweet face. When I see her, I know that should the sun ever fade, we would still have light in the world and never feel the coldness of its absence. She is brighter than the sunflowers she brings me.
Something prickles at the back of my mind.
A face peers out from behind the low hanging branches of the last remaining cedar tree. He is of an age with the girls’ father, but there is none of the master’s warmth in those hard features. There is nothing gentle about him when he charges from his hiding place, into the greenhouse, and wraps his arm around Marianne.
Her scream is muffled but I hear it as loud as the hammering of my heart. No one is coming from the big house. How do they not see?
Marianne kicks and bits and claws but cannot slow her progress towards the open door. She has not the strength to keep herself where she belongs.
My body feels so heavy. I cannot move. No one is coming. Can they not hear my own scream or is it only shrill in my head?
I am off my plinth. My legs move for the first time. I raise my arm and swipe it in an arc at the stranger’s head.
The stone of my arm cracks and my wrist falls to shatter on the floor. The pain is nothing to the feeling of victory as the intruder crumples to the ground like a dead leaf. Blood seeps into the flagstones and my toes. The master and his wife now run towards us from the house.
Marianne turns to me with wide eyes. She presses her face to my hip and wraps her arms about me. I cannot hug her back. Once more I am naught but stone.