I’ve looked at that garden every day since I don’t know when. It’s always simply been there. Owned by my parents, and their parents before them and so on, right back to the Conqueror’s time, at least. We’re pure Anglo-Saxon stock as dad always says, so maybe it goes back even farther than that. If so, how it was kept out of the hands of the Normans, I don’t know. They ‘acquired’ so many estates after their arrival and the few they didn’t have changed hands so many times that you couldn’t realistically plot the ownership back that far. But Barrow Force had always been part of the family, or maybe we’d always been part of it. Indeed, we’d even taken the name ‘Barrowborn’ from the estate, so who knows how these things went?
The estate is much bigger than most manorial holdings. We hold nearly a thousand acres directly and a couple of times that much are leased out to local farmers, so that’s able to bring us a decent living. YesYes,’re rich, in capital if not income terms. I suppose if you wanted to think of it in terms of purely historical and cultural matters we’re fabulously wealthy. That doesn’t really pay the bills though.
So we’re open to the public, during the summer season. The grounds, the house, the workshops, everything; except the private dwelling area, a sort of three bedroomed apartment, and of course the garden.
The garden, the private, family garden is about two acres of walled peace. Family, and Tom the head gardener, are the only ones who ever go in there and it was where I spent most of my childhood. Looking back it was a refuge, a place to hide and think and play, we spent hours in there, Nigel and I. Days it seemed, sometimes without end, the sun always felt warm, never too hot, never too cold, the wall gave us shelter from the wind as well as privacy from the grown ups. There was a small section of box hedging that Tom had trimmed up from the ground, it wasn’t a maze as such but we made one of it. The stiff prickly grass and weeds that were allowed to grow beneath the hedge were perfect for hiding in, for ambushes and hide and seek.
Hedgehogs and families of mice and voles shared our games, or at least tolerated them. They never feared us, it was as if they knew we wouldn’t disturb their lives, and they’d never learned to be afraid of people, even children. We respected them, and they basically ignored us.
The garden was on the south of the house just the other side of the drive. There was a wooden gate, sturdy and stained with I don’t know how many coats of paint and preservative, it was an entrance to our private world. Inside, anything could happen, and in our minds I guess it did. At the southern end of the narrow twisting path that led away from the gate, and ten yards from the family mausoleum sat the Tree. A Yew we called Winflæd, she was old, older than the house and probably older than the estate. Big, and a green so dark that the slightest cloud turned her black. Her branches were a thick impenetrable mesh that blocked the sunlight coming down and seemed to soak up whatever light might be reflected on its way back up. Even the birds avoided her, as did we, although we simply didn’t want to disturb her, spoil her peace.
Except on All Hallows Eve of course. Then we visited with her, talked to her, told her what had happened, what we’d done through the previous year, how the family was, inconsequential things most of them. Sometimes a little gossip, once we were old enough to gather that from the adults. She didn’t talk back to us of course, but she listened and sometimes she’d nod her acknowledgement and I knew it wasn’t merely the wind reaching over the walls.
Nigel and I brought petals for Winflæd, ones that we’d collected through the year; roses, tulips and lilies mostly. It had started with dandelions and daisies, until I decided that those were really weeds and that didn’t seem respectful enough, although she never complained.
Nigel was a year younger than me and I’d taken the petals even before he could walk and then later, led him by one hand when he was able to toddle without falling. We never missed a year. The petals I held in a small whicker basket where they’d been saved while we’d collected them. Looking back, no-one ever told me to do that. It seemed the right thing to do, and so I did it. Almost like giving the tree a name, that was the right thing to do. Except, it never felt like we’d named her, more like we just knew what her name should be, what it had always been.
And then Nigel died, a month before his eighteenth birthday, ten days before All Hallows Eve. It wasn’t expected, a stupid, stupid accident. Mum and dad were devastated, I guess we all were. We wandered round in a state of shock, not wanting to believe. Dad started the processes going, the paperwork, the notifications, whatever it is you have to do for that sort of thing. Then he and mum just sat around waiting for the undertaker to do whatever it is that they do.
The Barrowborns had been a big family once. Now there was just the three of us, but we had a big funeral; lots of friends, the school sent a coach load of his mates, the tenants were all there, Nigel had been a favourite of them all. I know people don’t speak ill of the dead, but in his case, there really was no ill to speak of. We had the big service, at St. Asaph’s down in the village, with the hymns and the prayers and the eulogy. I read a poem, ‘Acquainted With the Night’ by Robert Frost, I just about managed it.
A big service then, as expected, but the internment was quiet, small, just the undertaker and the three of us. We laid Nigel to rest in the dark quiet of the crypt on All Hallows Eve and I opened my soul to Winflæd.