The Skeleton Garden

The Skeleton Garden
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

An Alibi Ebook Original

Copyright © 2016 by Martha Wingate

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Alibi, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

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eBook ISBN 9781101968055

Cover design: Tatiana Sayig

Cover images: Shutterstock

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8
J
ULY 1944

The full moon washed all color from the landscape, rendering trees in shades of pale silver relieved only by the inky blackness on the ground beneath them. White lilies glowed in the middle of the border, their heavy perfume a siren's call as he passed. Mounds of geraniums and lady's mantle appeared as small contours in the landscape, distinguished from rocks only when a slight breeze stirred the summer air and the leaves danced silently in some midnight fairies' rite.

Will gave only the briefest glance at the house. The old man would be away to the back, sitting in the kitchen over his hot cocoa, all the windows well covered. No witnesses for this meeting apart from the badger stealing across the lane. No temptation to violate blackout regulations and pull out a torch—the moon gave all the light needed. But bright moonlight meant they could be caught out by a night raid. Will glanced up into the sky and decided he didn't care. He had to have it out, and this was as good a place as any. Better, in fact. It meant something, this—at least it did to him.

He stepped up to the edge of the pit, his feet crunching on the chippings under his boots, and looked down at the jagged sheets of metal sticking up at awkward angles. The plane had come down right inside the old man's walls, and it had been the talk of the village for a fortnight. The German pilot had bailed out and was found with a broken leg in a wood a mile away, then afterward, shipped off to a far-flung prisoner-of-war camp in Cumbria. The pilot would heal and be put to work in the fields, Will thought, as he kneaded his own shoulder, still stiff months after being shot down over Malta. They'd be wanting to send him back up in the air soon.

For a week, small groups of villagers had gathered in the lane at all times of day chatting among themselves, pointing to the sky and describing the imagined arc of the Messerschmitt's path. The plane lay in a heap in the yard of the house, and no one seemed bothered to move it. The Home Guard out of Romsey had posted security for a few days, until it, the town, and the army lost interest. Worn down by four years of bombs, the villagers turned back to what really mattered—the day-to-day struggle of doing without. What had they expected, that Winnie Churchill would make a personal appearance to inspect the damage?

They all grew weary of this reminder of the Führer, but hauling it away involved too many logistics. Instead, the old man decided to bury it. “Put it out of sight,” he said. He had a mountain of gravel squirreled away behind the hedgerow as if he had feared they'd start rationing rock chippings along with the tea and bread. Using it to bury a German fighter plane seemed right enough. The plane, cut into several large pieces, lay only half covered—they'd almost run out of the chippings and had started to mix in the soil that had been dug out.

“Not thinking of jumping in there yourself, are you?”

Will turned, saw who it was, and stuck his hands in his pockets. “You'd be free and clear if I did, now wouldn't you?” He shook his head. “Who would've thought you'd be a spiv?”

“The Ministry of Food made their own problems with this rationing—a few tins of beef, a bit of sugar—who's going to miss that? Do you know how far four ounces of bacon goes every week? No, you wouldn't—RAF has all it wants, now doesn't it, Lieutenant?”

“Puts a few extra bob in your pocket—the both of you. Just how much do you make on the black market?”

“It's every man for himself in war.”

“No, it isn't.” Had Will thought confrontation would work? “Look, I'm giving you fair warning. You were kind to me when I arrived here and you've been good to my girl, so I won't say anything this time. But you'd better pull out of it while you can.”

“Or you'll do what?”

It was just a shove—meant to knock him down, nothing more, but it landed on his injured shoulder. Will recoiled from the pain that shot down his arm. It threw him off balance, but instead of slipping on the gravel at the edge of the pit, the blow sent him toppling in headfirst. His neck landed eight feet below on a ragged piece of the metal wing left uncovered.

Silence, apart from a few loose rocks as they rolled down and tapped against the propeller.

“Will?” He stepped closer to the edge and jumped in. “Will—you all right?” Will lay facedown in the black shadows, only his legs sticking out into the moonlight. He took hold of his hair to turn him over—wouldn't it be just like Will to scare him on a lark—but Will's head came back too easily, a wide slit in his throat that cut deep. Blood poured out of his neck, soaking into the gravelly earth, creating an inky black shade of its own.

What do I care if my girl has dirt under her fingernails? That only shows the world that when I'm back up there in the sky in my Spitfire that you are down on the land, growing the food that keeps me flying
.

—Letter from Ratley Airfield

The large terra-cotta pot, weathered from the seasons, sported an inch-wide crack that strained at the wire wrapped round its circumference. Roots of the bay tree, seeking to break free from their encircling confinement, had insinuated themselves through the crack, found open air, and dried up. The small tree itself seemed to slump, as if resigned to a second-class existence. Pru and her brother, Simon, stood gazing at it in silence.

“We had a bad winter,” Simon said at last. “Rain wouldn't stop, and when it did, we froze. That's when the crack started,” he said, nodding to the gap in the pot. “I wrapped it with a length of copper wire—just temporarily, until I could get round to mending it proper. That was, let's see—about eight years ago. It seemed to hold all right until now.” He fell silent, and they continued their vigil over the pot.

Pru wondered how long it would be before they could put the pot out of its misery. “Time it got a new home, then,” she said, giving an encouraging nod to the slightly larger empty container awaiting an occupant.

“We'll break the old pot up,” Simon said, “and put a layer of pieces at the bottom of the new one.”

“We don't really need to do that,” Pru said, peering into the empty container. “It's got a drainage hole, that's enough.”

“The soil'd wash away if we don't,” Simon replied.

“It doesn't, actually,” Pru said, not looking at him and trying for a casual tone.

Simon acted as if he hadn't heard her. “And the layer of broken pottery helps the pot drain.”

“It would just take up space that could be filled with soil. If it was just a pot of annuals, it wouldn't matter, but for long-term planting—”

“I know what I'm doing,” he cut in.

She should keep quiet. “I didn't say you don't know what you're doing. It's just that best practices suggest the plant's root system needs—”

“Forty years I've been gardening here at Greenoak, and you don't think I know what best practices are?” His voice was loud enough to hear from the house. She hoped that Christopher wasn't home yet.

“Just because I haven't worked here that long doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about,” she said hotly, wishing she could just leave it alone, but not wishing it enough to do so.

“Oh, it must be your university learning that taught you that—did you get a degree in container culture?”

“I worked hard for my degree,” she shouted at him, “and it isn't fair of you to belittle it.”

Simon glared at her and walked off. Pru stood fuming for another minute, but her anger soon drained away. She hated to argue and usually avoided confrontations at all costs. Why did she have to stand her ground with Simon? “You're too much alike,” Christopher had said to her one evening, after overhearing a squabble about when to fertilize the fruit trees. She'd narrowed her eyes at her husband, but smiled. “You mean we're both stubborn.” Christopher had pulled her close. They were newlyweds and subject to sudden physical acts—something she hoped they would never lose. “Stubborn?” he had asked. “Never. You're”—he made a show of seeking the right word—“strong-willed.”

She took a deep breath and looked around. They had moved the pot to the place just off the corner of the terrace near the library, to what would become the Mediterranean garden. The landscape of Greenoak, almost every bit of it Simon's doing, sat comfortably around the late nineteenth-century house and reflected its Arts and Crafts style. The shrubbery along the drive echoed the native hedgerow without copying it plant for plant. The modest walled garden—replete with small fountain and veg plots—sat at the far corner, away from the house; a generous stone terrace ran along the back and turned a corner when it reached the sitting room. Pru found that corner of the terrace an excellent place to soak up heat from the stones. Below the terrace, and running parallel, a sunrose walk led to the Mediterranean garden. The adjacent wildflower meadow surrounded the hornbeam walk, which led to the wood. In front of the house, high yew hedges enclosed the enormous parterre lawn with its deep borders.

Now, waiting for Simon's return, Pru knelt down, took hold of the rim of the broken pot, and gave it a shake. “You did a good job mending it,” she said quietly. “Look how long it's lasted.”

Simon reappeared with a pair of wire cutters in his hand. He shrugged. “We'll use the broken pieces as mulch—a good Mediterranean touch.”

The storm clouds had cleared. For now. “We could smash it into tiny pieces and mix it with the chippings,” she offered.

“Good thing I've got some help in the garden now.” He rubbed a hand on his trousers. “I'm sorry,” he said.

“Me, too.”

“I didn't realize what it would be like to have a know-it-all little sister.” He gave Pru a crooked smile.

They set to work repotting—snipping the wire, pulling the broken pot off, and laying the rootball on the canvas to tease out and trim the roots.

Sibling gardeners. Most days, she still couldn't believe her good fortune. Working alongside her brother, whose existence she'd discovered only a couple of years before—and living in a large house in the English countryside with her new husband—it astounded her.

Brother and sister Parke—both used their mother's maiden name—might not always think alike on gardening, but looked, if not alike, at least related. Simon, in his mid-sixties, was only a couple of inches taller than Pru, who stood at five feet seven, but he had more than a decade on her in age. He was solidly built and had a burst of dark brown hair well marked with gray; it frizzed on the end, just as Pru's did. When she saw Simon walk round a corner or silhouetted against the autumn sun, Pru had to catch her breath. He was so much like their father—the father he never knew.

Life at Greenoak had begun with such hope. At last, here was her chance to claim the family she never had, to grow close, as siblings should be. The first few weeks were promising—Pru and Simon worked well together, planning the big garden renovation, laying out a schedule of work, ordering plants. Then Birdie died.

Birdie and George Parke had brought Simon up, telling him his parents had died in a car crash. In truth, his parents—Pru's parents—had left him behind in England. Abandoned children were common then, casualties of the war. Simon wasn't truly abandoned, of course; he grew up happy in a loving home with maternal relatives, but the siblings never knew of the other's existence. Not until Pru moved from Dallas to London where she worked for a year as a jobbing gardener. The Wilsons, living in Chelsea temporarily, had hired her. “Our gardener at Greenoak in Hampshire,” Mrs. Wilson had said, “has the same surname as you: Parke.” Not long after, the decades-old secrets began to unravel.

Since Birdie's death—George had died ages ago—Simon's anger was quick to flare, as if the embers of resentment had been banked for many years and someone had now started to poke them with a stick.

That would be Pru. She remained a living reminder that his English mother had left him behind to move to Texas with his American father. But that had been years after Simon's birth. At the end of the war their mother had been young and pregnant—and alone; she hadn't known for certain that her American beau would return for her. By the time he did, Simon had settled in with Birdie and George and been adopted.

Pru picked up the corners of the canvas cloth, sifting soil, snipped roots, and remnants of terra-cotta into the middle, and Simon lifted the bundle. She collected the tools and followed him around the corner to the shed.

“Is Polly home from Bristol?” Pru asked as they straightened up the worktable.

“She is, just today. She stayed an extra night to see Peppy. The girl had a tourist-trade meeting to attend there.” Simon and Polly's daughters, Penelope and Miranda, lived in Hastings and Netley Marsh, respectively, and Pru saw them only occasionally. “I'm meeting Pol at the Blackbird. Will you and Christopher join us for a pint?”

Pru nodded. “I'll finish up—you go along and we'll see you there.” Simon's wife, Polly, an accountant by profession, had been gone all week, sorting out the miserable finances of one of her well-paying clients. Pru was sure that Simon missed her—shortening his already short fuse the past few days.

Pru wiped her hands on a piece of flannel. There now—tools cleaned and hung on their pegs. She emerged from the shed and walked into the yard, taking a moment to admire her surroundings—it had become a common practice at the end of her day.

She had fallen in love with Greenoak on her first visit to the Wilsons—it was made of creamy stone with a steep tiled roof that came down into a modest, almost unnoticeable, flare and had an arched oak front door. The house itself, although not large, seemed enormous to Pru, but at the same time, intimate. The ground floor comprised a dining room, formal sitting room, kitchen, and library, replete with a cushy sofa and fireplace—Christopher could often be found there, perusing a local natural history. A central staircase ran up the middle of the expansive front entry; it had a hand-carved oak rail and led to six bedrooms, each with its own bathroom—one of many discreet modernizations carried out by the Wilsons.

Pru saw that parked in the yard—the gravel area near the kitchen—was Christopher's car and a tiny delivery van. Leaning up against it was a lanky fellow who stood straight and broke out into a toothy grin when he spotted her.

“Hello, Peachey,” Pru said. “Waiting for Evelyn?”

“I am that, Pru. We've the dinners to deliver to the old folks, you know.”

“Won't you come inside for a cup of tea?”

“Oh, well, now,” Peachey said, pulling his cap off his head and twisting it in his hands and checking his watch. “I wouldn't want to distract my Ev. She's by the clock, you know.”

“Yes,” Pru said, “I know.” The Royal Observatory in Greenwich could set their clock by Evelyn. “Well, I'll let her know you're here. And,” she added, pointing to her wrist, “when it's time, you pop right in.”

Pru stepped from the worn flagstone terrace outside onto the more recent flagstone floor of the mudroom, where she took off her shoes and hung her jacket before venturing into the kitchen. “Hello, Evelyn.”

Evelyn Peachey stood across an expanse of kitchen with her back to the door. She nodded to the pot on the stove and said, “Ms. Parke. I've just poured up the tea. Mr. Pearse went straight up the stairs when he arrived, and I haven't seen him since.”

When Harry and Vernona Wilson gave Pru and Christopher the gift of Greenoak—at least for a year, while the Wilsons were away on an archaeological dig—Mrs. Wilson had also given them the gift of Evelyn's skills as housekeeper and cook. “She's a treasure,” Mrs. Wilson had said about Evelyn. “She's frightfully shy, however, and it makes her seem a bit…standoffish. But don't worry, the moment will come when you'll be fast friends.”

Months later Pru continued to wait for that magic moment. She approached the teapot on the table. “Thanks. I'm sure he'll be down directly. I saw Peachey”—Pru saw Evelyn's shoulders tighten—“Albert,” she said, backpedaling. “I saw Albert out by his van. He's welcome to come into the kitchen and wait for you here.”

Evelyn finished parceling out potatoes into ten square plastic containers and snapped on the lids. “Albert knows his place, Ms. Parke, and his place is by the van. Until it's time.”

Christopher pushed open the door from the hall—he'd already changed his uniform for khaki trousers and a mossy-colored sweater. Evelyn stood at the sink, scouring out pots and pans.

Pru gave Christopher a quick kiss. “How was your day?” she asked.

He nodded. “And yours?”

She shrugged. “Evelyn,” Pru said as she lifted the teapot, ready to pour, “will you have a cup of tea with us? You and Albert?”

“No, Ms. Parke, but thank you,” the back of Evelyn said. “Albert and I have our duty. Mr. Pearse, could I slice you some cake?”

“Thanks, Evelyn,” he said, “but the tea will be fine.”

Christopher cut his eyes at Pru. She nodded and cleared her throat. “Evelyn, Christopher and I would really prefer that you call us by our Christian names. I know I've asked before, but truly, there's no need for formality while we're living here.” She smiled encouragingly at Evelyn's back.

Evelyn hung the last pot over the Aga range and picked up her apron to dry her hands. “Mrs. Wilson never complained about how I addressed her. Nor Mr. Wilson.” She stood clasping her hands in front of her, with a stony expression, and looking down her beaky nose at Pru—easy to do, as Evelyn stood at about six feet.

Of course Mrs. Wilson never complained—but she had asked, just as Pru was asking. “Try if you must,” she had said to Pru, “but I doubt if you get any further than I did. She does seem to relish the below-stairs mentality.”

“I'm sure that was fine for Mrs. Wilson”—
drat, caught out,
Pru thought as she saw Evelyn raise an eyebrow—“I mean, Vernona, but it would make us feel more comfortable. You wouldn't mind too much, would you?”

Evelyn's brick-wall demeanor stumped Pru, who had always found it easy to get along with people. She counted Ivy Fox, who had been the cook at Primrose House where Pru worked for a year, as a good friend, and thought that she and Evelyn would slip into the same comfortable relationship. She tried to be friendly and helpful around the house—offering to slice the bread or make the tea—but was continually met with stony refusals. It hurt Pru's feelings, which, in turn, made her feel childish, as if she were a petulant ten-year-old and Evelyn wouldn't let her on the slide at recess.

“Evelyn, my dear, your chariot awaits.” Saved by Peachey sticking his head in the kitchen doorway—his Evelyn alarm must've gone off.