The Greenhouse, Part 2
Missed Part 1? Catch up here!
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.