Granddad's Garden

I end up in the garden because I can’t bear to listen to them anymore, the false smiles they flash at each other, the little barbs delivered in honeyed tones. ‘Remember that time, Evie, when he called me in to help with Mum even though you lived five miles away? I’m sure he didn’t want to bother you…’

It’s sickening. He’s only been dead four days and they can’t even call a truce out of respect, pretend to get along for five minutes. I’m ashamed of them all, my mother included.

I sit on the steps that lead down to the grass from the back terrace. The shrubs, flowers and plants haven’t registered my grandfather’s absence yet. The crocuses are blooming purple and yellow in their bed, and the azalea bush quivers as small birds fly in and out. Small stakes are planted at regular intervals in the vegetable patch, the rectangles at the top labelled in my grandfather’s neat handwriting. What will happen to them, the tomatoes, the courgettes, the squash? He put the seeds into the ground with such care, and now he's joined them.

The back door creaks and someone steps out, coming to sit next to me. I keep my eyes on the vegetable patch because I know who it is – there’s only one person in that house who cares enough to follow me out here. Stephen and I sit in silence for a while, looking at the familiar trees enclosing the garden, the flowerbeds on the right, the straight rows for the would-be vegetables on the left. Granddad’s shed, at the back, is painted green to blend in with the view. His tools are lined up inside, visible through the little window. The thought of him never picking them up again makes my chest clench.

‘What a shit show, huh?’

I nod, not trusting myself to speak. When I look at Steve, I’m surprised again at how grown-up he looks in his black suit, his shoulder-length hair in a ponytail. He turned nineteen in February. Though I’m two years younger, I wonder if people look at me, too, and see a near-adult.

‘Come on, Laurie,’ Steve says. He takes my hand and pulls me to my feet.

We’ve always got along, he and I. I don’t know if it’s because we’re only children and didn’t have anyone else to play with at family gatherings; some part of me wants to believe that it’s something else, something deeper. A little part of Granddad that somehow got passed down to us, having skipped his own children.

Steve opens the door to the shed. The smell reminds me of Granddad – the cleaning product he used on the tools, I think, strong but not unpleasant – and I have to look away for a moment, taking deep breaths.

‘Look,’ Steve says, his voice soft.

Facing the door, above the tools and the wheelbarrow, Granddad hung a piece of string between two nails, and pegged photos to it. This wasn’t here last time I visited; he must have done it recently. There is my own face, younger by a few years, my blonde hair in plaits; Stephen, grinning and holding a chess trophy; the two of us working in the garden. At the end is an older photo of the family, Granddad with his arm around the woman I barely knew – killed by a brain aneurism at fifty-five – and all the children, my mother, Steve’s mother (even then, shooting looks at each other), Uncles Mark and Toby.

To distract myself, I grab a watering can and go back out to fill it at the tap. There is something relaxing about watering each plant, watching the soil darken, the smell of damp earth surrounding me. A few aphids are clinging to the hibiscus’s leaves, and I return to the shed for the gardening gloves. Steve is kneeling in front of the cupboard, the doors open wide. He’s holding a wooden box – a kind of chest, with a curved lid.

‘What’s that?’

Lifting the lid, he pulls out a folded sheet of paper. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I was just looking around and I found it.’

I hold my breath as he unfolds the paper. Is this a letter, one last message for us, hidden here, where he knew we’d be the ones to look?

If it is a message, it’s a cryptic one. Where do the spiders go? Steve reads the question aloud, as if expecting an answer from above. We look at each other. It is definitely Granddad’s handwriting.

The spiders. The word triggers a faint echo of memory, a sense that I should get the reference. The spiders’ nests. Why is this phrase in my head? Do spiders have nests? What about their webs? Along with the sentence, something else comes to mind: the feeling of standing in Granddad’s room, talking to him, while he sat in his rocking chair. I pull Steve towards the house.

Sounds of strained conversation are coming from the living room, but I turn left instead and take the stairs two by two, my steps muffled by the carpet. I hesitate for a moment before going into Granddad’s bedroom. Now that he’s gone, I feel intimidated, as I’m stepping into a church, somewhere holy. I imagine him laughing at me.

Steve follows me inside; I beeline to the bookshelf by the window, scan the titles on the spines.

‘What are you looking for?’

In response, I pull out a book. The Path to the Spiders’ Nests, by Italo Calvino. I remember Granddad reading it; I thought the writer’s name was funny, like a male version of Italy. Fitting, I guess.

‘Where spiders go,’ I mutter, less certain of myself now that I’ve found the book. I open the soft cover, but there is no message written on the first page, nothing. Perhaps I misinterpreted his message. I flick through the pages just in case, and when I reach the middle a small piece of paper flies out. Steve catches it. K7, it reads.

I frown. A slow smile appears on Steve’s face.

‘The chess set,’ he says. ‘It’s the old system, descriptive notation.’

The chest set leads us to a painting in the hallway, a farm nestled in meadows with a plume of white smoke leaving the chimney, and the piece of paper taped to the painting’s back takes us to Granddad’s little black book, where he liked to write down thoughts about his readings, lists of songs, names of plants. The message on the last page (‘Follow the wine to the third out of five’) sends us down to the cellar.

‘He planned this whole thing for us, didn’t he?’ I say, looking through a shelf. ‘A treasure hunt.’ He must have spent time thinking it through and setting up, all the while knowing that he would no longer be here when we got to it.

How well he knew us; this is the perfect distraction. Chasing the next clue, trying to figure out his meaning. Part of me feels bad for getting distracted, but in this moment it’s almost as though he’s here with us, the grandfather we knew and loved, not the gaunt man drugged up in a hospital bed.

‘Laurie, look.’

Steve is holding a set of Russian dolls which I vaguely remember, once upon a time, living on the mantlepiece upstairs. He opens the first, then the second one. The third one seems stuck. He passes it to me, and I wrap the edge of my black top around the bottom of the doll, twisting carefully. The wood creaks.

‘Nearly,’ Steve says.

I adjust my grip and pull again. The doll pops apart, and doll number four clatters to the floor. Two small bits of paper also escape. We pick them off the floor.

They’re both stamps, brown and old looking. Their shape is unusual, long rectangles with a woman’s profile, facing left, in the middle. It’s contained in an oval border, around which are the words ‘Postage – One Pound’. The rest of the space is taken up by an intricate pattern, and in the corners there’s a D, a K, a K, and a D.

‘Are these supposed to be another clue? Did Granddad ever collect stamps?’

Steve sounds as puzzled as I feel.

My mother’s voice echoes down to us; she must be standing at the top of the stairs. ‘Laurie! We need to get going. It’s almost five and we’ll get stuck in traffic if we leave any later.’

‘I’ll be up in a minute!’ I shout back.

I look at Steve questioningly, but he shrugs and pockets his stamp. ‘I guess we can sleep on it, see if they remind us of anything. And I can come back here and check if an idea comes to us. I’ll call you on video so you can see what I’m doing.’

I wish I didn’t live three hours away, but his offer is sweet and I plant a kiss on his cheek.

‘I’ll see you when I see you,’ I say. My stomach weighs like a stone. The thought of leaving this house – of my time in this house coming to an end – is devastating.

‘Laurie!’

‘Coming!’

Steve goes back up with me, and as we reach the top of the stairs, his hand finds mine and squeezes briefly.

On the way back, the sun dips in and out of copses and small hills, stroking my cheek one moment, gone the next. Mum is driving, and talking to Dad about the next stages, sorting and selling the contents of the house before it can go on the market, doing some minor works that would increase its value. I stop listening. The English countryside looks like a small heaven in this light, green and cosy, going on for miles.

My phone vibrates on the seat next to me. A message from Steve: Try looking up the stamp online.

I pull my stamp out of the tiny pocket in my phone cover. How does one look up a stamp? I turn my 4G on, and type into the search bar ‘postage one pound stamp’. I don’t know what I’m expecting, but I get a series of links to stamp collectors’ blogs and forums. A world I know nothing about. I find myself scrolling down a list of valuable stamps – well, more than valuable. Some of them are worth millions, it seems.

One stamp on the list catches my eye. I look from the webpage to the stamp in my hand. They look identical. Worth up to £20,000, the website says.

‘What?’

‘You’re saying something, Laurie?’

My dad is looking back at me.

‘Oh, no, no. Sorry.’

I wait until his attention has turned back to Mum and grab my phone. My hands are shaking as I type. £20,000???

Apparently so, Steve sends back.

Do you think they’re the real thing?

It would be like him, wouldn’t it?

I lean back in my seat, thinking about the little presents Granddad used to give us, the money he would slip into our hands at the end of the summer holidays. But twenty thousand pounds?

There’s a moment of silence, then my phone buzzes with another text. Should we tell them?

I close my eyes. Granddad knew he was dying. The doctors were clear about how advanced his cancer was, and yet, amid treatments and his body failing, he bought those stamps somehow. He put together that treasure hunt, just for us.

‘Of course, Elsie wants to sell the house as is,’ my mother is saying at the front of the car. ‘She doesn’t want to improve it in any way, which is so typical…’

No, I message back.

Let the money be our last secret, a parting gift. The way he wanted it.