paths needed new rocks and the stone milkmaid fountain standing guard at the center sprouted a growth of black mold along her skirts. Even the bricks in the wall needed fresh mortar. It had to have been beautiful once. If it were her garden, the roses would still be blooming and scenting the air with the rich perfume Mother so loved. Instead the roses grew spindly, dead blossoms choking the ends, their promise of beauty and hope faded and gone.
She and the roses were kindred spirits, Rachel thought as she sank onto one of the iron benches, and why she found the garden strangely consoling. It had certainly settled her mind yesterday, after that disaster in Dr. Edmunds’s office. Or had it been his sudden thoughtfulness that had calmed her?
“Eh, there, Miss Dunne.” Joe’s voice, followed by the slap of the rear door shutting, interrupted her thoughts.
“Oh, Joe. Good morning. I thought you were at church with the others.”
“Too many chores today. Don’ tell Dr. E.” He winked. “You all right, then? Heard your ’ead was botherin’ you.”
“It is much better, out here in the fresh air.”
“I guess it’s fresh,” he said, pushing back his cap to scratch his head. Joe sniffed the air. “I think it smells like the ’orses out in the mews.”
She grinned at his comment. Thank heavens someone in this household could lift her spirits. Someone besides Dr. Edmunds on the rare occasions when he smiled or told her she would never be a bother.
“What are you about this morning?” Rachel asked, nodding at the thin-bladed saw hanging from his hand.
“I’ve come to trim the branches of the pear tree there. It’s ’alf-dead. Though it seems awful late an’ all to be trimmin’ the trees in ’ere. The garden’s gotten so tattered, were it a cloth a rag-picker’d want nothin’ to do with it.”
“Why was it permitted to go to such ruin?”
Joe shrugged. “Dr. E stopped anyone from tendin’ it after ’is wife died. Reminded him of ’er, I s’pose. Was ’er garden, an’ all. But it’s not like ’e was gonna do the work ’imself. Coulda hired a gardener to keep it trimmed and tidied. I woulda done the work meself,” he stated, dropping the saw beneath the sickly tree and wandering off to retrieve a ladder propped against the rear wall.
Dr. Edmunds’s wife’s garden. Her death must have pained him deeply, for him to have ignored the garden so as not to be reminded of her.
“It is a shame, even for that reason,” she said when Joe returned.
“That it is,” he replied, setting up the ladder. “I coulda got those lilacs bloomin’ again.”
“You really would like to be a gardener.” She tried to imagine Joe, scrappy and streetwise, hunkered down among pansies and ladies’ slipper.
“I grew up in the stews, but I still remember the first time I saw Hyde Park. So green it made your eyes ’urt.”
“You would like Ireland, Joe. It is a green like you might never imagine here in London.” Here, the colors were muted by the soot and fog, like clothing that had been washed one too many times. “The sky overhead can be soft and blue like ducks’ eggs or ruffled with scudding clouds. And when the heather blooms purple, there is nothing sweeter on this earth than to lie down among its scented flowers. My little sisters love to bury their faces in the blossoms and breathe deep . . .” Oh, this was making her heart hurt worse than thoughts of church services. She had to stop.
“So ya see why I like bein’ out ’ere. It were pretty, when I first got ’ere, a few months after the missus died. Not anymore.” He shook his head and started climbing the ladder.
“Why not go ahead and tend to the garden yourself?” Rachel asked. “I doubt anyone would stop you.”
“I’m the boy, Miss Dunne. I know my place and my place knows me. I don’ aspire to better than what I got.”
“Is it so wrong to aspire to greater? I always wanted . . .” Rachel stopped before she voiced her wants. Any dreams she’d once owned had died in a cramped and filthy room back in Carlow.
“Wanted what, miss?” Joe asked, sawing away at a dead branch.
At one time she’d intended to write a book on everything she had learned about herbs and medicines and nursing. Too many women had to rely on word-of-mouth and unreliable recipes handed down by family members. A straightforward book written in