The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys

easily have stumbled upon some other exotic creature. Giraffes! Dancing penguins!
    “Oh, hello,” says Jane. She looks over at me. “Mrs. Billings,” she says.
    The county rep claps her hands, startling the horse, and says, with alarming cheerfulness, “What a perfect morning for cultivation!”
    Salad Blue snorts from behind me. “Hello,” I say, stepping forward. “We haven’t met. I’m Gwen Davis.” I leave out the bit about the Horticultural Society.
    “Ah,” says Mrs. Billings. “You’re from the Horticultural Society.” She looks me up and down, as though I am an actual plant specimen. “The one who took so long arriving.”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, at least you’re here now. Where you belong.” Mrs. Billings steps briskly around the horse, looking down at our one wobbly furrow. “I see you are all keeping busy. Good.” She looks like some sort of beetle in her shiny mackintosh. “And how are Mrs. Purvis and Mrs. Crane working out?”
    “Who?” says Jane. She has moved over, closer to where Salad Blue and I are standing.
    “The women from the village who cook for you,” says the county rep. She has turned to face the group of us, her little beetle antennae bristling. I feel as though I am back in primary school.
    “We got rid of them,” I say. “We’re doing for ourselves now.”
    The beetle puts her hands on her hips. “You can’t get rid of them,” she says.
    “Chaperones,” Jane whispers in my ear.
    “Why not?” I say. “We prefer to do for ourselves.”
    “But everything must go through me,” says Mrs. Beetle.
    “Everything probably does go through her,” says Jane unkindly, sotto voce .
    “There are rules,” continues the rep. “You don’t own this place. You don’t live here.”
    “But we do live here,” says the Lumper. She has one hand on the plough, her face all grimy with sweat. She looks as though she has been working a plough for years.
    Is it really possible to think in abstract terms when we are using our bodies so completely? Is it possible to do something “for the war” and not attach it to one’s personal life? We are here together at Mosel because of the war. We are doing this work because of the war. But we are doing this work with our selves and so, in a large measure, it cannot help but be about us. The Lumper is right. It is very simple. We do live here.
    “Let me show you what we’ve done,” I say, and I lead Mrs. Billings away from the North Garden, towards the newly restored kitchen garden. She follows me rather reluctantly, making small gasps as she walks on her little beetle legs down behind the stables. As I wait for her to catch up, I look back at the girls. They have turned the plough around. Everyone has claimed a position at the machine. Jane guides the horse. They all move forward over the new ground.
    That night Victualette Noir cooks us fish with a mustard sauce that is truly delicious. She makes a rice pudding for dessert. We eat and talk with more appetite than usual and later we all go down to the room with the wireless.
    London bombing continues unabated. The port of Plymouth is also being heavily hit. The battle of the Atlantic is on and Britain has already lost well over a hundred ships. For some reason the Admiralty has decided to name all the corvettes in the fleet after delicate flowers. It is odd to hear of the Campanula under escort from the Hyacinth and the Bluebell . One of the ships is even called the Convolvulus , which, besides being an excellent flower for a rock garden, is a very tricky word. I imagine the radio-man on that corvette trying to get the name of the ship out in a hurry when they are under attack. As a flower, the convolvulus is pretty. As a weapon of war, I fear it might be doomed.
    The other news is even more depressing. It is conjectured that Hitler’s advance into the Mediterranean is inevitable and perhaps even unstoppable. I look over at Jane, sitting in a chair by the window, her knees drawn up to