Jack Quinn holds a degree in English literature and French from Trinity College, Dublin. He completed a master’s in English literature at the University of Upper Alsace, France. He works as a songwriter, music producer and DJ in his native Dublin, where he currently resides. He contributed regularly to Connected magazine. His review of James Terry’s novella The Return features in the current issue of Heavy Feather Review – here is the link should you wish to read it: https://heavyfeatherreview.org/2024/01/26/the-return/. He has penned a number of novels and screenplays.
The Darkness Gardener
By Jack Quinn
In the middle of the night a phone alarm goes off, strobing the inside of a pup tent. The tone is a recording of a man singing the Samsung Homecoming alarm sound “Daa da, dadida. Daa da dadida…” then bursting into enchanting laughter, a flurry of little hoots. So enchanting is this laugh that if you overheard it somewhere, you’d find yourself under its spell laughing too. For that was the way of Nathaniel, always casting cheer in his wake, conjuring light in the darkness.
Matilda turns off the alarm with her own sad species of chuckle. Cold night treacles around her to the tune of men’s voices bodeful in the distance. The polyester startles and flutters. It’s not safe in the Dublin’s vast Phoenix Park at this time, she should move on, but the angels’ share rising from her tongue bears the indictment:
You grew this darkness when you snuffed out the sun.
Her whole life the vultures of what she’d one day do circled. When they finally descended, it was to silence the man with the enchanting laugh. Round and round we go again, the merry-go-round of scourges.
She gets to her feet, a sad ape stooping. Matilda remembers Nathaniel putting on an old-timey Brooklyn accent, “I’m a sucker for heart, see, for a scrappy fighter who stays on their feet. Just you remember – greatness is forged not born.”
“But why do I make things so hard for myself?”
“Because forges gotsta be hot, kiddo.”
He was so sanguine with love when the Fiend first came for her. And though she appreciated his skill in defusing life’s dirty bombs with funny voices, the curtains eventually closed on his comedy bits. No more was it a laughing matter. Good money was thrown after bad on therapists and rehab clinics. Relapse after relapse soon doused the light in his eyes, the once-playful child in them caned gloomily rigid. He had no choice but to divorce her before she ruined him.
She remembers a message from the bottom of yesterday’s bottle:
Pull the arm of the slot machine one more—
No! Get back. She feels the Fiend’s hot breath again, she smells what it ate; their life savings; his mother’s priceless jewels; the horizon – she gambled it all away as it made her its pet swarm of locusts.
I am not the Fiend, child. It is me: your Daimon, your guardian angel. I tell you shame fears but one thing and that is courage. You must dare to play one last game of chance, no matter how much it frightens you. Afterall, fortune favours the brave.
She smiles, no longer estranged from the inner angel she knew so well as a girl. At the end of her stygian mind a scintillation wakes. I know how to fix it! How did I not think of this before?
Down the gas-lit lovely Chesterfield Avenue waltzes Matilda. The night shift for her sins.
*
Matilda arrives at the big house, so rarefied, so lush. The Georgian shutters are closed, wearing cowls of unbridled Virginia creeper. She remembers when Nathaniel first closed them for good, as the breakup struck him with strange blows. The ensuing breakdown left him with agoraphobia, and by the time the Fiend was done with him, the once-great architect was little more than a bemused recluse. How it eviscerates her to think of it.
Matilda fantasises her creation will cajole him outside, that the sublime will somehow break the blackening spell, and he’ll laugh again. She vows to silently tend to their dream even as night terrors dog and maul her beloved.
She gives the woodworm-merry door the gentlest shove and pussyfoots round a hedge grown so high it obscures the back from the house. She steps out to what she thinks of as her blank Sistine Chapel. Down six steps of stone it lies, the grand old garden.
Matilda is quickened when she sees it under a benison of numinous moonlight. It is one monstrous, sprawling scrum of mordant briars; spiteful nettles; Medusas of sticky willy and legions of thistles, all undergirded by a starry fondament of dandelions. Oh and then there’s the English ivy: its empire is every wall and bough and fence and shrub – the monarch of the garden. But the monster must be slain and the Queen deposed, for this is Matilda’s dominion now.
Armed with her trusty, rusty gardening knife she steps up to the bank of the sunken garden roiling beneath her…
She dives in.
Our Gardener tears into the beast, and though she’s scrabbed, stung and slitten, in the melee something happens – some exchange of essence, some blood brothers’ communion: the weeds speak. They speak to the province of her Daimon. She stops slashing. All at once she understands their language, that of Shakti and of Kali; how they are driven by something sacred and ancient that bids them spread, conquer and evolve. They are endowed with the power to thrive in the harshest of environments with the scantest of nutrients. They are the vanguard of the armies that will reclaim the earth after Man has eaten himself. They will swarm over everything in their path to reset the balance. They are Nature unbound, as it should be— Swarm?
There it is, the mirror up to herself. She craves to be corralled, caged and controlled just like the basest parts of our nature. Civilization must be imposed upon the bald ape. Without it there is no order, leading to chaos; gouging; bludgeoning. Win at all costs. The winner takes it all. When you remove the rule of law, we are reduced to what we once were and what still buzzes beneath our meat: locusts.
With one bloody hand clasped round the thick, spiney neck of a briar, Matilda lowers the blade and saws. She doesn’t stop for four berserk weeks. One night at a time, she tamed that garden.
*
On the first day of the fifth week the compost heap is high with monsters and majesties. Matilda has allowed a curtain of ivy drape over the carrion from the wall behind. True, she feels for her fallen foes, once so plucky, but now she glows in nectar-thick air, reassured by the order she has imposed. The shrubs wear garlands and flowers sing in unison in their beds. The garden is a masterpiece.
Why is Mother Nature so beautiful?
The inner voice whispers back:
So that you know you are loved, child.
What about the Fiend?
I have always battled the Fiend for you, though he vanquished me many times. Keep keen ears for my words and you need never worry about him again.
A sigh of relief. She cannot wait for Nathaniel to see. In the heavens she spies an approving Saturn, a sated Mars and a mirthful Jupiter. Venus too twinkles crystals down on her head. The gods are on her side. She wields aloft her knife in triumph, a gunmetal statue in moonbeams.
Hands grab the knife and Matilda is tackled to the ground.
*
Matilda is in the front garden in handcuffs. A policewoman holds her by the arm and won’t make eye contact. Straining her ears she catches Nathaniel’s voice, so reedy now, so feeble, talking through the door open just a crack.
“No, not in a very long time.”
She looks up but can only see two policemens’ broad backs. She goes to call out to him, but the policewoman shoots her a direful look.
“And does she have a history of violence?”
“Why do you ask? No.”
“She had a knife.”
“Why did she have a knife?”
“That’s a very good question. Has she threatened you or broken into your property before?”
“No, of course not. I can’t imagine what she was doing back there with a knife.”
“You might want to check your house and inspect the garden to see if anything’s been stolen from a garage or a tool shed.”
“No. No that won’t be possible. I’ll um, have someone inspect the garden in the morning.”
“Alright.”
“I just can’t understand why she’d do something like this. Have you questioned her? Is she OK? Is she drunk or something?’
“Given your history, perhaps you’d like to speak to her yourself. Perhaps there’s a friend or a family member you can ring.”
“Maybe I. I don’t know. This is all so…”
“We found a rucksack with a sleeping bag and a tent in it stashed in one of the bushes.”
“What?”
“We have reason to believe it’s hers. She seems to be sleeping rough.”
Silence oozes through the crack in the door. Hot shame spiders over Matilda’s face and she fights back tears.
“Well, I assume you have, you know, mechanisms in place for this sort of thing.”
The policeman clears his throat. “I see. Look, you might want to get a new side door. The property isn’t very secure.”
“Yes, of course.”
The other policeman chimes in, “And will you be pressing charges, Mr Laurel?”
“Charges? No. Look, this is a lot to process and I’m not well at the moment, so if you wouldn’t mind.”
He closes the front door. Matilda’s warbling heart blunders against her ribcage as her little soul curdles in its sanctum.
*
Later that night Nathaniel sits at the kitchen table. He reaches inside a hive of memories, eating the sad honey he once made of Matilda. Tonight keeps lunging back at him. Homeless. Guilt gnashes the very tripe of him. How could he have been so cold, so craven? He couldn’t even look at her; speak to her; offer to call her mother. He just froze. Where was his honour, his humanity?
Addicts eventually devour everything, especially your humanity. Matilda always said they’re like locusts. He remembers his breakdown. What she took from him was more than just money. He’s unable to leave the house for God’s sake. He can’t go outside, and she lives out there. He got the mansion while she got a tent.
Was it all his fault? He chose his parents’ approval – not to mention their money – over the love of his life, and it just broke him. If only he hadn’t given up on her when it got hard, when she needed him the most. A tent! What must her life be like now? It’s not safe for a woman to sleep rough like that. Today was a cry for help and he just closed the door. Mechanisms. He rubs his hands down his face and takes a slow, wretched gulp from a large snifter.
Nathaniel picks up his phone to call the policeman handling the case. He has to do something. There’s a noise outside. He opens the shutter, then the window and listens. It’s unmistakable – sobbing. He’s had a lot of brandy, maybe enough to venture out.
At the backdoor he downs the drink and places the glass on a windowsill trembling. He steels himself. Shaking his head he darts back inside and slams the door. He leans his forehead against the wood and inhales in anguish. But then through the window lilts the soft sobbing once more. Breathing heavily he ventures out again on jellied legs.
Past the high hedge he steps, quaking in the expanse. He thinks he’s going to faint when the clouds covering the moon are dusted aside and he beholds Matilda’s love letter, her greatness. The aching beauty of what lies before him strips bare his sable heart. It’s like it was in the first flush – before the addiction took over and she stopped tending to the garden and to him.
He tries to pinpoint the sobbing. It’s coming from the compost heap. “Hello? Matilda, is that you?”
He descends – almost distracted by wonder – floating, forgetting his fear, moved by what she has achieved so silently, so humbly. Timorously he approaches the back wall. The ivy shudders with each sob. Slowly Nathaniel parts the curtain of leaves. The sight of his beloved with dark ages nestling under her eyes, so abject and frangible, washes away the final vestiges of rancour. He sees she suffers just like him, and in that moment they are the same broken soul. He reaches out his hand and just about manages to utter the words, “Let’s go inside.”
Matilda embraces him, shaking gently with silver buds gathering in her eyes. “How’s this for a scrappy fighter?”
Nathaniel hoots his enchanting laugh again though it is frail and sorrowful now. She laughs too, unsure, trying not to fall at his feet. In a Hollywood mid-Atlantic accent he says weakly, “Kiss me you fool.”
They kiss to the sound of the little voice inside her head:
You see, child, fortune does favour the brave.
Thank you, wise Daimon.
Darkly comes its reply:
I am not your Daimon.
The Galway Review 