The Physic Garden (10 page)

My father had been a very fine gardener, although he was no botanist. He was, however, a member of the Free Gardeners, a brotherhood to which I never aspired, although there were some aims and ambitions of which I most certainly approved, and approved them the more, the older I grew. But I was never a great one for joining secret societies, no matter how beneficial they might have been for myself.

I was somewhat surprised to find that Thomas was not a
member
of the Free Gardeners either. It was supposed to be – and largely was – a group of working men who had joined together, ‘for their mutual benefit and support’, as the constitution termed it. But I was uncomfortably aware that the gentry, the nabbery as I used to call them, before they became my customers (and I still do call them that in the privacy of my own home), were much inclined to join the Free Gardeners as well.

It was supposed to be a magnanimous gesture, a sort of
condescension
to what they thought of as the lower orders, that the gentry would go along to meetings alongside their common
gardeners
. They were always made very welcome, even though, as my father once said in an unguarded moment, they could be ‘gey patronising’. It was the reason why I never availed myself of the opportunity while I was yet a gardener, although men who had
known and liked my father had certainly issued me with more than one invitation.

‘Will you come?’ they would say. ‘You’d find it very helpful to you in all kinds of ways.’

But I knew I would not be able to put a curb on my tongue in the face of such patronage on the part of the gentry, and it seemed foolish to go out of my way to make enemies, so I simply told them that I had too much work, which was true enough.

As far as the gentry attending meetings went, there was much more to it than their supposed generosity. They liked to know what was going on. They liked to keep a finger on the pulse of the working man and the things that he might be about. They were terrified of revolution, at the tail end of a revolutionary century, and they would go to meetings and listen out for sedition. They were, all of them, well aware of what had passed in France only a few short years before and nightmares of the guillotine haunted their feather bed sleep.

They seemed to have taken a collective decision to spy on the lower orders, lest any should be fomenting sedition. And who can blame them? I would have done the same thing myself in like
circumstances
. My father would probably have denied that it was the case, crediting his masters with more generosity of spirit. He was always respectful of his betters, although it did him little good in the long run. It was bred in the man, in blood and bone, much as a clever plantsman will breed certain qualities into a fruit or
vegetable
. And it must have been born in me too, except that something changed me and I don’t just mean later events. Even as a lad, I was aware that my father was worth ten of the men to whom he was forced to doff his cap like an underling, and I hated it. It was one of the reasons why I admired Jenny’s father. As Sandy Caddas once declared, the weavers would bow before nobody, not even the king himself, were he ever to come down among them.

My father would go out to his Free Gardener meetings on a regular basis, but I never found out what he did at them, although I was very curious.

‘Ask nae questions and you’ll be tell’t nae lies,’ he used to say. And off he would go with his long apron, his talk of Jack in the Green, his book of ritual, laboriously written down. He kept that volume well away from prying eyes. After his death, I hunted high and low for it, fancying that at last I would find out what was written in it, but I could see neither hide nor hair of it. When I asked my mother about it she said that somebody had come to the door, offering her the sympathy of the Gardeners and a little money that had been collected at a meeting, ‘for the benefit of Robert’s widow and children’. The same man – having sat for a while with my mother, passing the time of day and enquiring after each of the children in turn – had asked her if she knew where my father’s book of ritual might be kept. It was lent only and should be returned to the Free Gardeners from whence it came, but only if she could lay hands upon it at that moment, and she was not to think of troubling herself about it.

‘Well,’ she told me, ‘I knew where it was, right enough, because your father always kept it in the same place, under his pillow, and I was so grateful to them for their contributions and their kindness that I fetched it at once, and gave it to him. Did I do the wrong thing, William?’

I could not, in all conscience, say that she had done the wrong thing. And besides, there were more small sums of money
forthcoming
from the Gardeners over the years, so I am sure she did the right thing, but I would dearly like to have known what was written in that book, and it is one volume which has never been through my hands in all these years that I have been dealing in and with books.

God knows what daftness they got up to, nor why men in
particular
are so fond of their secret rituals, like lads at play. It has sometimes occurred to me that women are far too sensible to indulge in such nonsense, but encourage their menfolk in these pursuits with the sole aim of getting them out from under their feet. And we men dutifully oblige. But the meetings served some purpose in that they would also exchange knowledge, gardening
knowledge of the sort to be found in the book which Thomas had given me. And it was helpful, because I suppose there would be some among them who could neither read nor write, or perhaps who struggled, could maybe manage an order for plants but that was all. It would be very helpful to them if their fellow
gardeners
could pass on the detailed and intimate knowledge that was needed to nurture plants and the ground from which they sprang.

I know what the sum total of my father’s ambition was, though, because he told me. He wanted to grow a pineapple.

‘Ah,’ he would say. ‘That would be a very fine thing. To have a hothouse. To grow pineapples. Or even a single pineapple! Let’s not be greedy about this, William.’

I told Thomas about this in an unguarded moment. I think he could see that I was inclined to scoff but he was never one to mock those who loved their work.

‘Not a bad ambition,’ he said. ‘Not a bad ambition at all. I have heard far worse.’

‘The good lord knows what he would have done with it if ever he had succeeded.’ I glanced at Thomas. What did I see in his face? Mild disapproval perhaps? He was my weather vane at that time and I would temper my behaviour to his responses.

‘But I suppose it was a harmless enough ambition for a
working
man to have,’ I added, seeing that he so obviously expected me to defend my father.

‘It was a grand ambition,’ said Thomas, decidedly. ‘Have you ever tasted a pineapple?’

‘No. I imagine it might be something like an ordinary apple.’

‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Nothing like that.’

‘Then you have tasted one?’

‘Aye, once or twice. They are sweet beyond sweetness. I tell you, William, if the fruit of the tree in the Garden of Eden had been a pineapple, not all the angels in the heavens could have kept Adam and Eve from tasting it. And thinking paradise well lost! So don’t mock your father’s ambition. Perhaps he had tasted the fruit at some time and that was what inspired him.’

‘He never said. But then we never asked him.’

‘They are ambrosia and their juice is like the nectar of the Gods. It runs down your chin and leaves the scent of itself on your fingers.’

‘Is that true?’

‘Oh aye. But I am told that they are devilish hard to cultivate here in Scotland.’

‘I’m sure they are. I wonder if I’ll ever grow one?’

‘Would you like to try?’

‘I’ll try anything that will buy me a measure of satisfaction. Or money. I take it they are very expensive.’

‘Very.’

‘But mostly, I think I would do it for my father.’

‘It would be a fine tribute to him. My uncle has a pineapple house,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘In Ayrshire.’

‘His gardener must have the secret then.’

‘I think so.’

‘My father would have been envious. But if he had managed it himself, he would have been the envy of the Free Gardeners as well.’

‘Did you never want to go to the meetings with him? Were you never curious about what they got up to?’

‘He said he would take me when he thought I was ready. He died before he could do it. Or before I was ready. And afterwards I thought I never would be ready. All the ritual, all the nonsense that seems to have grown up around it! I have small curiosity about it and I think I never will have.’

Even allowing for the fact that, in later years, I attained
something
of a reputation as a radical publisher, a dangerous
reputation
at times, I never attended meetings, never allowed myself to be persuaded to participate in unwise demonstrations of
solidarity
. I did not disapprove of them, but I knew that they were not for me and stuck to my principles. If a man brought me a pamphlet and if it was well written, I would print it. Sometimes, if I thought the words might be deemed inflammatory, I would
do it in secret and distribute it in equal secrecy. Ostensibly I dealt in rare books, particularly those concerned with natural history. That was the face I presented to the world at large and it was as true as any other. As far as any other beliefs were
concerned
, and I had plenty, I made no grand gestures and believed nothing I was told, taking nothing on trust. Thomas did that for me at least. He imbued me with a desire to question all things.. Meetings were open to infiltration you see. There were men whose job it was to rouse revolutionary passions and lead good men into terrible folly. I and my family steered a course through some very stormy waters, through times that saw better men than me transported or executed. I sat on a number of fences. In secret, I did what I could, but I did it with great
circumspection
, knowing that more than myself were involved, that there were others, my wife and my family, who were relying on me to behave sensibly. If I were transported or worse, I would be of use to neither wife not child, and all of us would be wrecked on the reef of my own folly.

So even back then, I was circumspect and I never did join the Free Gardeners.

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Thomas, whenever we talked about it. ‘And yet it’s what men do.’

‘Indulge in such nonsense? More shame to them.’

‘It gives them a modicum of certainty in an uncertain world.’

‘Ritual or no, he was a practical man, my father. He would never have tried to set up an apothecary shop. He would never have fancied himself a botanist. He would never have ached to know more about plants and their properties. He was just a
gardener
. A fine gardener, but still. Pineapples. That was where his ambitions lay. And maybe he was all the better for it.’

‘He would never have treated me with your familiarity,’ Thomas observed.

‘No he would not. He could not have brought himself to do it.’

‘And consequently he would never have been the friend to me that you are.’

‘No. He knew his place and kept his family from starvation. Perhaps I should decide to do the same.’

‘You’re a botanist, William, whether you like it or not.’

‘Aye, and that’s my tragedy. I love it all, the Latin names, and the properties of plants and the uses and the growing of them and the way some plants grow where others do not and the beauty and the poetry of it. Much good may it do me!’

He said nothing. There seemed nothing else to be said.

By the end of summer, and in spite of all my hard work, matters seemed to be coming to a head. Faculty members were
complaining
about the state of the garden, at first mildly, but then vociferously. The professors who liked to walk there were
beginning
to look with disapproval on the general untidiness and decay they found. And of course, they blamed me. It was whispered that I was too young and inexperienced for the position, that I was lazy, neglecting my duties. The truth was at once simpler and less open to remedy. I had bitten off more than I could chew. I had rushed into the apothecary plan without realising just how difficult it would be for my mother. Meanwhile, I was struggling more and more to keep up to the work in the gardens and to keep Thomas Brown supplied with plants.

When I look back on it now, I see that what I probably should have done was to stop obliging Thomas. I should have told him that the garden must be my first priority, with the apothecary business and my mother coming a close second. If I was going to go roaming the countryside, I should have brought back such herbs as my mother could have used to make medicines. In fact, I could have bought them for a few pence from the likes of Jenny and if I had asked her, I think that Jenny might well have taught my mother some of what she knew.

But I didn’t do any of that. I couldn’t do it. I made all kinds of excuses to myself, but the plain truth was that whatever Thomas asked, I would do. Perhaps he should have seen how I was
struggling
. Well, I’m sure he did because he tried to do what he could to remedy it. But he was blind to my real problems. He believed that he could educate me, shape my mind, bring me out of myself. But I think my daily struggles to make a living were quite beyond his understanding, as the daily struggles of the poor always are beyond the full understanding of the wealthy, even those who have come from poverty themselves. Our memory for such things is as short as that of women for the pains of childbirth.

He did help me though, I can’t deny it. And in doing so, he laid the very foundations of what I have become since. He introduced me to a world beyond the garden, a world of books and learning. He made me what I am. But all that came at the expense of the work I was engaged to do in the college, the work I should have done to assist my mother. And for that, I blame him, but I blame myself more.

Without my father to support her, my mother was sinking day by day into a sea of misery. Thomas gave me some medicine which he said might help to lift her moods of unremitting gloom, and so it did, when she could remember to take it. But I think it was Thomas’s attention that made her feel better and when he was gone, she would fall into gloom again. She trusted him as a doctor, but she was uncomfortable with our friendship. I felt guilty because I thought I was not the pillar of strength my father had been, but Thomas would say, ‘How can you be, Will? You’re a young man and her son. Her natural impulse will be to protect you. You want her to lean on you but you can never replace her husband.’

The medicine helped, but even that made her fret because we had not paid for it. I told her that I obliged Thomas enough with all my hunting for plants on his behalf, but it made no impression on her.

‘We should not be beholden to him,’ she would say. ‘It is not right and no good can come of it. Your father would not have approved of it.’

This was still her touchstone, the standard by which she judged everything: whether or not my father would have approved. And perhaps she was right.

As well as my mother’s health, I would consult Thomas from time to time about my young brothers. The lads had commenced some schooling, but we had to pay a share of the dominie’s living, his food and his fuel. James McClure kept a damp schoolroom outside the college, large enough to house a few scholars of small means. He would turn a blind eye to payment some of the time, but he was not a rich man himself. His clothes, which were the garments of a bygone age, were all threadbare and snuffy. The boys made fun of him until he would lose his temper and pull out an ancient leather tawse which he barely had the strength to wield. He was the man who had taught me some years previously, and I liked him very much, but at the same time, I found him a pathetic figure. He was reduced to teaching the sons of poor men, and yet I believe in his youth he had once had the potential to be a great scholar, a potential that he had dissipated by an over-fondness for spirits, tobacco and gambling. He smelled to high heaven of smoke and whisky. But he could be an inspirational teacher when he found a boy who had the sense to listen to him.

‘Dear God,’ I said to Thomas ‘The man’s wig is losing more hair than his own head.’

Thomas let out a great splutter of laughter and almost choked on his whisky. He said, ‘You’re telling me that your brothers have a dominie whose wig is going bald!’

I started laughing too. It was comical right enough and the poor old dominie might well be a figure of fun, but it was no joke when we couldn’t afford for the weans to go to the schoolroom more than once a week. There was never enough money and there was never enough time either.

In a panic, I sought Thomas’s advice about our plight, especially
the complaints about the garden. There was nobody else I could take my troubles to, and he confessed that he was aware of the grumbles in Faculty and had done what he could to counter them.

‘You cannae grow trees where the air is filthy,’ I said. ‘No
matter
what I do, no matter how much care and attention I gie them, they aye look as though something has burned them. I try. I try my best.’

‘I know you do.’

I pulled a few scorched leaves. ‘Maybe I should show these to Faculty. Try to make them see what the type foundry is doing to my plants.’

‘Maybe you should.’

‘Naethin lives here!’

I remember it as though it were yesterday. ‘Even the birds,’ I said, ‘Even the birds sometimes fall from the branches, bundles of bone and feather. There’s no telling why. Well, nae doubt your Professor Jeffray would dissect them and find out and draw
pictures
of them afterwards.’

‘The slugs survive,’ Thomas observed, picking one off a leaf and then dropping it and squashing it beneath his foot.

‘Oh aye, the slugs always survive.’

We walked on together, more than a little downhearted by the sight of so much destruction.

‘And how does the apothecary business go now?’

‘Disastrously,’ I admitted. ‘My mother is not really able to do the work and I don’t have the time to help her.’

‘I feared that might be the case.’

‘Then you should have told me so. Before I started on the venture.’

‘I did tell you it was unwise.’

‘But you didn’t tell me it would be ruinous.’

‘I thought you might be offended by the advice, William.’

‘I wouldn’t have taken offence. Not if the advice came from you.’

‘Well, maybe not. But what will you do now?’

‘I don’t know. Faculty are complaining that I don’t spend enough time on the garden. And perhaps they’re right. My mother
is struggling. Jean and Susanna are no help, although they should be. But they are haunless as ever. They break pots and spill
distillations
and are better off out of it. Bessie is a capable lassie, but she has her ain work, and they keep her hard at it. We seldom see her.’

‘What about your brothers? Could they not help more?’

‘Och they are ower young yet. James works as hard as he can and since he is no scholar, and never will be, he’s better off in the garden, doing as he’s told. Johnnie is a thoughtless lad just, and Rab is as sickly as ever.’

‘What would be best for you? I mean what would be the best thing from your point of view? Can you tell me that?’

‘If I could pay back the money we borrowed for the room that houses the shop, I would put a stop to the whole venture. My mother would go back to keeping house, and the girls to their stitching. And then perhaps without that worry I could go back to doing what I am paid to do in the garden.’

I didn’t add, of course, that so much of my time was spent gathering plants for him and not in the garden at all. And he didn’t see fit to mention it either.

He said, ‘How much do you owe? Is it a great sum of money?’

‘Great enough for me. We borrowed some five pounds and although I have paid a little back it has grown to six pounds now. I cannot lay hands on such a sum. Not without going hungry for weeks.’

‘Why did you not borrow the money from me in the first place, William?’

‘Because I didn’t know you so well, back then. And besides, I would never have asked you for so much. You must know that. It would have been beyond me to ask you. It would be beyond me now.’

‘Will you let me help you?’ He seemed unusually grave. I stared at him but his look was unfathomable.

‘How do you mean? What could you do?’

‘You’ve been such a help to me this summer and yet you won’t take regular payment.’

‘You let me attend your lectures.’

‘I look for you but I seldom see you.’

‘I come when I can. The garden takes up so much time.’

‘Then will you let me assist you now? I can give you six pounds with very little trouble to myself. You know that. The only thing which has hindered me from offering it until now has been the knowledge that your pride would not let you accept it. If I give you the money, you can pay off your moneylender, let go of the shop, and give your mother peace to grieve for her man and cope with her children without having to worry about work she cannot do.’

I was speechless for a moment, all kinds of feelings warring inside my head: gratitude, affection, discomfort at my own
foolishness
. Then I found my tongue. ‘It’s tempting, I’ll allow. But I would think shame to do it.’

I had the words of my father nipping my ears. ‘Never borrow from your enemies,’ he had told me. ‘But still less should you borrow from your friends, for it is the soonest way to ruin a good friendship.’

I think Thomas could see that I was wavering, and he hurried to press the point home. ‘There’s no shame in a friend assisting a friend. Particularly when the mere accident of birth means that one has more financial resources than the other. And it would be far better for you to be beholden to me, your good friend, than to some rascally moneylender, if that’s how you insist on seeing it! William, I would gladly give you this money as a gift from one friend to another. You know that.’

He put it so plainly and simply that it was impossible to be offended by the truth. The offer was tempting. But my pride still hindered me.

‘I would borrow the sum, so long as you treated it as a loan and not a gift and allowed me to pay you back as and when I could.’

Whatever makes it acceptable to you, William. Pay me back or not, just as you choose. I’ll not harass you for the sum, but if, in the future, you feel able to pay me, then please do so.’

We shook hands there and then. And later he paid off the
moneylender
himself, so that there should be no arguments with the man about the terms of the agreement. The rogue might have threatened me, but there was something about Thomas Brown that inspired a fear of unpleasant consequences, even in such
villains
as that. I think my mother was more relieved than she would ever have admitted to me, but she certainly told Bessie as much on her next visit, and Bessie related the same to me.

It must have been all of fifteen years later, when I sent ten guinea notes, drawn on the Royal Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh, being the sum loaned, plus a deal of interest, to Mr Thomas Brown at his house in Ayrshire. I had debated long and hard between my wish to be done with the debt and my fear (or should that be desire?) that he might take the repayment as a friendly
overture
, as an attempt to make contact with him again. But there was no reply, and now I don’t know whether I was relieved or disappointed or perhaps a little of both. At that time, I was fully occupied with my business and my family and I hardly permitted myself to think about him at all.

I know only that today, when I flicked through the leaves of this old book, that sits here on my desk, I found the old bank notes, pressed between two pages. Untouched.

I looked at the text, and read, ‘The black cherrie is a tree that I love well. There is a sort at Niddrie Castle whose fruit is
preferable
to any cherrie. I take it to be a soft heart cherrie but it’s a great bearer. Gather their stones when full ripe, eat of the fleshy part and lay the stones to dry a little.’ That’s what the words said.

I took the notes and folded them back into the book at that exact place. This room is dusty at the best of times, but most
particularly
in the early autumn when the weather is cool and dry, and the fire is lit again. My eyes water. I must needs take a linen handkerchief and wipe them, rubbing at them until they are red and sore.