A few months ago when it was warm enough to sit outside in Turton Tower’s beautiful garden and drink tea, I took a notebook and made a few notes.
Yesterday I came across the notes again and this formed the beginning. Setting is crucial as it gives a birth place to writing. Once a setting is established, even if vaguely, then the momentum of writing is generated.
Gardens are fascinating places and always have an effect. I never forget Jane Austen’s flawed but brilliant heroine Emma escaping to her shrubbery from the melancholy of home after she thinks she has lost Knightley forever.(Chapter 28).
The weather continued much the same all the following morning; and the same loneliness, and the same melancholy, seemed to reign at Hartfield—but in the afternoon it cleared; the wind changed into a softer quarter; the clouds were carried off; the sun appeared; it was summer again. With all the eagerness which such a transition gives, Emma resolved to be out of doors as soon as possible. Never had the exquisite sight, smell, sensation of nature, tranquil, warm, and brilliant after a storm, been more attractive to her. She longed for the serenity they might gradually introduce; and on Mr. Perry’s coming in soon after dinner, with a disengaged hour to give her father, she lost no time in hurrying into the shrubbery
The setting here reflects the controlled yet sensual turmoil of Emma, and the way in which society at that time provided little escape for women from the oppression of their daily circumstances. Here nature (though enclosed) offers respite from loneliness and self recrimination. It reconnects her to the natural physical world and indeed her natural physical self.
Their garden always felt better empty. Everyone had gone away, and the cafe plates were cleared. For some reason these things cheered her. She felt that their place relaxed into itself again. She watched the sinking light and in her head dared to repeat the word which haunted her.
For in this garden once upon a time, a woman had made a promise to her favourite son who could only smile from one side of his mouth. His smile stopped her from crying because he still knew her well enough to love her, even though she was now all he had left of his previous life. It was part of their perfect trust that she called him a new name each day, as the old gave him pain: and maybe names were such fluid imaginings after all.
Her son used to go by the name Roger; but after the accident he became someone else and buried Roger right back there in the past,with its sharp smell of fever and disinfectant, edged with low voices murmuring about illness and care.
”Roger isn’t a strong name mother, it will not endure you know” said her son.
So they buried Roger(who lacked the skills to survive) and this other young man, slightly broken, but so, so brave had been born.
