The Best of Shonagh Koea's Short Stories by Shonagh Koea

Author:Shonagh Koea [Shonagh Koea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781775531166
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2012-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Pleasures of the Past

ON SUNNY DAYS when the wind came from the north, the terraces that comprised the lower garden lay like warm and inviting earth smiles curving round the mild brow of their hill.

Arthur and Nancy did not know that, though, on their first visit to the property with the land-agent when all the For Sale notices decked the front wall. On the first visit they saw only tangled vines, skeletal trees, a jungle of rampant weeds cascading in disarray. The terraces were beneath all that, like secrets known only by spiders, hedgehogs and inquisitive neighbouring dogs who knew the arcane byways below the enveloping canopy of growth.

It was only much later, too, that they remembered the odd little breeze that kindly fanned their first inspection of the property, soft as a breath on their cheeks. They recalled that warmth when the actual physical exhaustion of the move faded and the idea that the garden was tenanted had taken root.

‘I think this is where the old chap grew his onions,’ the agent told them on that first day, and he kicked idly at the pernicious weeds. ‘And there’s his grape.’ He nodded towards dry tendrils clamped round a tree trunk. ‘They say he had wonderful circulation right to the end,’ he said, ‘and she was as fit as a flea, so they say. If you ask me, it was all the exercise. They wouldn’t leave,’ he said. ‘They wouldn’t go till they were carried out.’

He shrugged as he waved one arm at that wild hillside.

‘People take one look at it,’ he said, ‘and they go away again. Everyone’s been here — the Mackintoshes, Dr Lovegrove and his lady-friend, Trudl and Frank (you’d know them), the Marriotts. They’ve all been here and they’ve just gone away again. People these days don’t want the work. Now the old people were different,’ he said. ‘It was their whole life. They loved it.’

A giant reticulata camellia loomed over their heads, two dead branches clawing the remainder.

‘It’s sprung variegated leaves,’ said Arthur, ‘on the left, see?’ and he pulled carefully at the high golden branch. ‘You could breed a camellia with yellow foliage from that.’

‘Ah,’ said the agent, triumphant now, ‘so you’re going into horticulture.’

‘That’s not my line.’ Arthur was looking round at the majestic herbaceous violence that surrounded them.

‘If you ask me, it’s dying.’ The agent plucked roughly at the tree, shivering. ‘It’s cold up here,’ he said, blew into his balled hands and stamped his feet. ‘The day the Marriotts came we all nearly died. They couldn’t get out of it fast enough.’

‘I find it rather warm,’ said Arthur. ‘What about old Nance there?’

‘Nancy,’ she said, ‘and I’m quite warm. I think it’s really warm and pretty. Look at those flowers down there and feel the warm breeze.’

‘Onion weed.’ The agent turned up his coat collar. ‘Onion weed and oxalis. You’d need to get professional eradicators in.

‘It’s beautiful.’ That was Arthur. ‘You’d have to bring it back to what it was. You’d have to be dedicated.

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