The ladder was too heavy for her. She had had Richard put it out. Last time she had the ladder out, it was days before she could catch Richard in a spare moment and get him to bring it in. That sort of thing happened too often, when there was only herself and Richard in the house, that things weren’t finished because Richard was too busy; the ladder lay abandoned on the lawn, and the grass beneath turned yellow for lack of sunlight.

How polite the girl was, carrying her ladder, listening to her talk about roses. They always said the Japanese were polite. She found herself saying things to her that she hadn’t expected to say, opening up a little eccentrically, so rare it was to have a sympathetic presence in the house. She was aware that sometimes she talked about her roses as if they were people. Women, always. It seemed to her that roses were feminine, even those that had men’s names. She had fallen in love with one or other of them, from time to time. Perhaps the more so because she lived in a world of men.

I was a Londoner when I came here, you know. I didn’t know the first thing about gardens. But it was something one could do, I suppose, when one was alone, when the boys’ father was out on the farm. I learnt from books at first, made a grand plan, planned it all on paper and planted it out, or had Billy plant it out for me, but then the boys came along, and then for some years I was too busy with them to do much more. It was only later, when I was on my own, that I really began to learn.

After he died, she might have said. As if something from him had passed on to her. The touch of the soil. Awareness of the weather each day as it dawned.

One learns, she said instead, as one goes along. She said it lightly, glossing over the memory of how hard the learning had been, how many mistakes and setbacks and losses, how many little lessons there had been, and how she had faced them, one after another, teaching, toughening herself as her hands toughened with the work. One plants, she said, and then one turns away. Things grow. Or don’t. And then one wonders why.