A Garden of One's Own

Chapter 2

The dress that was eventually purchased was a light shade of pink, differentiated from white only by the soft glow it emanated. The skirt fell about my legs in a most flowing, feminine fashion, cascading more like water than fabric, and while the bodice required that I be corseted tighter than usual, it complemented my figure nonetheless. But the most important thing, Mother reminded me, was that my costume be pretty but simple, attractive but modest.

"The Riddles are very wealthy, very dignified." She paced around my bedroom as I stood in front of the mirror and examined myself. I ran my hands down my sides, following the inward curve of my body, and rested them on my waistline. "You must put on the most polished performance of your life, my dear. You must impress them."

"Mother, I won't be able to do that if you insist on fretting." I spun slowly before my reflection, throwing it a backward glance as I did. As children, we are taught to avoid vanity, but as I watched the girl in the mirror, I could not help but think the pink enhanced the natural flush of my cheeks, the brightness of my curls. Mother and I had chosen well in this dress. "Don't worry yourself."

"Mr. and Mrs. Riddle, Cecilia - they are very traditional people. They disapprove highly of the suffrage movement, of this...this jazz music the Americans have invented. They expect you to be nothing less than a perfect Englishwoman, do you understand?"

I did not answer and, instead, reached for my bonnet. I affixed it on my head and tied it beneath the chin, still fiddling with the ribbon when I said, "What of their son? It is he I am hoped to marry."

"Oh, I haven't met him, but they say he is very handsome. Now come here, Cecilia. I must make sure you're presentable."

"You have been standing here, looking at me for over an hour," I sighed but subjected myself to her inquiry all the same. For all that she gripes, Mother has been very supportive of me, her only daughter. Her guidance has never yet led me astray, and if she did not aspire to such lofty goals, I doubtless would be married by now. She patted my back, my stomach, my breasts, and finally, she cupped my face in her hands. "Am I presentable enough, Mother?"

She smiled. "I think the Riddles will be most pleased with you."

Anne, the caretaker of our house, had already summoned the carriage. Its harnessed horses pawed the road, as anxious as we were to begin our journey. The distance between Little and Great Hangleton is not terribly large - I've traveled farther before - but two women in their finery are not suited for long walks in the countryside. Clutching my parasol, I followed Mother down the stairs. Father was waiting by the door, his hands clasped behind his back.

He leaned forward to kiss Mother. "When do you plan on returning home, Annabel?" he asked.

"Before supper, I should think. I will be waiting outside, then."

She opened her parasol and walked out the door. I stared at her back as Father approached me. "Well, I realize there are certain hopes hanging on this visit, but I hope you enjoy yourself all the same. The youth are only ever young once, you know."

"But Mother said I am to act the perfect little Englishwoman," I giggled as he kissed me on the forehead.

"Ah, Cecilia, you are the perfect little Englishwoman. If this Tom Riddle doesn't fall over at your appearance, he is not worth your hand in marriage."

I grinned at him as I left the house. Father always seemed to know the right thing to say. He soon followed after settling matters with a few servants. Anne helped me climb into the carriage, and with the cracking of a whip and a sharp reminder from Mother to keep myself out of the sun, it jerked into motion. With Great Hangleton receding, I set my mind to the task at hand. Perhaps I should have been assiduously fanning myself, as Mother was doing, but Father had spoken truly: I was still young, and the young will act as they do. What would this Tom Riddle be like, I wondered? He was handsome, the rumors said as much, and he was roughly my age. But how handsome? In fact, was Tom Riddle handsome at all? Did he have the charisma and personality to match such looks, assuming, of course, that he had them?

This was the nature of my musings when Mother sharply jabbed me in the arm. "Look, Cecilia!"

"My dear wife, I believe Cecilia can see it quite plainly."

I drew a sharp intake of breath, my eyes following the contours of a large edifice that shadowed the rest of Little Hangleton. While my mind was preoccupied with the superficial qualities of a potential husband, I had failed to take into account just how wealthy his family might be. The manor had been in the Riddles' possession for three generations, but its stately, almost intimidating façade made it clear that it had existed for far longer than that. Tom Riddle was raised and fostered in this house. I thought of the light streaming into my bedroom window at dawn and wondered if he had ever seen the sun while growing up.

The carriage pulled up in front of the manor, where the Riddles had already seen fit to dispatch a servant to greet us. "Welcome to Riddle Manor," he announced as I stood on the front steps of a building too tall for me to view without tilting my head backwards. "Mr. and Mrs. Riddle extend their greetings and are waiting inside. If you would please follow me."

The front doors swept open, revealing, to my surprise, an atrium that veritably sparkled in the morning. Perhaps I was expecting a gothic mansion, lifted from a novel, furniture draped in dust-coated sheets and flickering torches tucked in alcoves, but it was as modern as any other house. Let the aristocracy pride themselves on the lineage that flows through their body. They would never forsake the comforts of the present for those, or lack thereof, of their ancestors. The Riddles were sitting in a parlor located, I would presume, in the rear of the house. Six delicate porcelain cups arranged around a still steaming teapot rested on the table before them. With folded hands, they stood up at us as the servant introduced us with a bow. Three empty chairs awaited us.

Many things we once remembered with clarity become blurs with the progression of the years, but this - this memory is as lucid as the thousands of facets of a diamond scintillating in the light. I did not like Mr. and Mrs. Riddle as I sought them out from beneath my lowered gaze. But this might not be an accurate statement: it would be better to say that my initial thoughts of them were not favorable. They held themselves stiffly, pretension etched into every one of their wrinkles. Mrs. Riddle's waist seemed even more tightly corseted than my own. They were both dark-eyed and dark-haired, although Mr. Riddle's hair was touched with gray.

Light conversation commenced between our families. They asked of happenings in Great Hangleton, of Father's work as a lawyer, of our opinion of the peace with Germany ("Wholly unjust, but what else to be expected of the likes of the French?" Mr. Riddle scoffed). I only spoke when necessary and otherwise busied myself with sipping tea, and I did not like them.

"Miss Grant?" Mrs. Riddle's voice shook me from my daze. "Your name is Cecilia, yes?"

I set my cup back down on its saucer, pleased that there was nary a clink to be heard. "It is, ma'am."

"A beautiful name, to be sure. Cecilia, this is my son, Tom. And, Tom, do not slouch in front of our guests. It is most impolite."

He straightened his posture, and for the first time, I diverted my attentions to the youngest Riddle. He took my hand in his and placed a gentle kiss upon it. "I apologize. It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Grant."

"I am sure it will be an equal pleasure for us to become better acquainted, Mr. Riddle," I replied, retracting my hand as he pulled away.

I lightly ran my thumb past where his lips had touched my skin. It was not the first surprise of the day, for the rumors had proved correct: Tom Riddle was a handsome man. What they had failed to mention was that he was an exceedingly handsome man. He had inherited his parents' features, but where they failed to grant them any striking significance, the frame of Tom's youth gave them a radiance that seized my heart and clutched it until I ached. He was the most beautiful man I had ever seen.

Yet not all was right with him. He lacked something, an essential element that would round his persona out to perfection, and I suspected as much when his mother snapped at his hunched shoulders. We did not speak at all for many minutes after our introduction, allowing our parents to fill the room with their chatter. They did not need us. Always, I was looking at him. What was missing, I mused? Why should someone with such bold eyes, such symmetry of face give the impression of being nothing more and nothing less than - to be perfectly frank - dull? It could not be his education; the sons of all wealthy families, after all, are required to attain a rather high standard of literacy and overall knowledge of the world. It could not be his physical appearance, which, I have already established, was above par.

The powers of observation are not to be underestimated. Look long enough and one shall find the answer. An hour transpired, and I settled on a satisfactory response. A man can only be improved by so much by finely tailored clothes and God-given looks; he requires something utterly intangible to ascend to the status of gentleman, a man to be respected and a man to be admired, perhaps even a man to be feared. His parents had achieved such a status: Mr. Riddle's hands never moved more than was necessary, and Mrs. Riddle's gaze never drifted from the task at hand. But Tom could not stop playing with his hands, and his eyes flitted from the door to the window to the floral designs on his teacup. The missing elements? His carriage, his deportment, and his complete lack of caring.

I struggled to suppress a yawn. Then I waited for an opportune moment to insert myself into the conversation.

"And, dear Lord, the propaganda!" Mr. Riddle exclaimed, shaking his head. "Patriotism is a fine feeling, but what protects England better than our splendid isolation? Alas, those hot-blooded warmongers in Parliament thought it proper to send a million English boys to their death. How courteous of them, eh? Meddle in business that ought not be meddled in, and this is the result: a loser punished beyond its means and a victor too weak to enforce the terms."

Father was too smart to voice his true views on the Great War. "Spoken truly, sir."

"Now, did the government knock on your door and ask for food?" Mother said. "We had the most dreadful officials from London visit our house, and they ransacked our little garden. All we had were a few tomatoes, and apparently, they found it necessary to trample my best flowers in the process of snatching those tomatoes."

"Most horrendous," Mrs. Riddle sniffed, nodding. "I wouldn't let those monsters anywhere near my garden and told them as such."

"Might I take a walk among your garden, ma'am?" I inhaled very quickly and steadied my voice. "As my mother has said, our own blossoms have become casualties of war - " Mr. Riddle chuckled appreciatively at my witticism " - and I have always enjoyed gardens. It has pained me very much to not be able to wake up in the morning and see the flowers I had attended to."

Mrs. Riddle gave me an odd look. "You garden?"

Berating myself, I shook my head. "No, ma'am. I merely meant that I take great joy from walking among the flowers - their colors and scents are very powerful. I admit to missing them their presence."

"Well, I think you shall find that our gardens are some of the finest ones in the area. John?" She gestured to the servant standing behind her. "Please escort our guest to the gardens."

I stood up and curtsied, bowing my head towards our hostess. "Thank you very much."

The servant John led me down a hallway and pushed open a set of glass-paneled doors, which led directly to a gravel path. There I bid him good-bye. He closed the doors as he departed, and suddenly, I found myself alone amidst the grass and dirt and flowers swirled in a heady perfume of nature so alluring I could not but take a step forward and savor it.

I had not lied when I told Mrs. Riddle I enjoyed walking in gardens, but the true reason as to why I do lies in the fact that, for the past few years, our garden has slowly been entrusted to me with Mother granting me more and more responsibilities until it virtually became mine. I cannot claim much to my person - I am an unmarried girl, dependent on her parents - so to have a garden of one's own, while it is no more than a little patch of earth, is a liberating thing indeed. Oh, that I should never tell this to anyone, but there is such a satisfaction in finding oneself smudged with soil and scratched with branches and having a bouquet of tulips to bring home and display in one's room.

I decided it would be a secret to share with my husband on our wedding night.

The Riddles' garden was much larger than mine. The occasional bench lined the walkway. In the nascent warmth of May, the flowers bloomed violently, each color as vibrant as the next, each one threatening to outshine its neighbor. The war of hues is pleasing to the human eye, and gravel crunching beneath my steps, I let them paint my consciousness. How I missed my own garden then! How cruelly its inhabitants had been destroyed in the name of saving England! Such a garden takes many years to arrange and cultivate, and how quickly, too quickly those many years of work disappeared beneath the boot of government.

So lost I was in my lament that I did not hear the approaching footsteps, nor did I identify them as Tom's. "Do you like it?"

I spun around, my heart racing. "Mr. Riddle?"

"The garden, I meant. Do you like it?"

"Oh, it's...it's excellent. It's quite big too."

"We've got a gardener, you know."

"Yes?"

"He lives over there." He pointed in the general direction of somewhere beyond the manor's boundaries. A small cottage stood in the grasses. "He probably doesn't work as much as he ought to."

"But your garden is still very beautiful."

He looked at his nails. "Do you think so?"

"I think all gardens have a measure of beauty in them, even the most disorderly."

"I don't care much for gardens, personally. Neither does Father, and Mother only likes the roses. She says the bushes can rot."

"Very few people appreciate bushes, I've found." I edged closer to him, where he remained motionless. "If a garden was composed of nothing but flowers, could you imagine how much color there would be? Too much, I think. The bushes add space. They separate the colors so we can better appreciate them, Mr. Riddle. What is your opinion?"

"Opinion?" He shrugged. "I don't have much of an opinion on this matter, although I would like to ask you a question, if you wouldn't mind, Miss Grant."

"No, I wouldn't mind."

"Which flower is your favorite?"

"That is an unfair question," I laughed. "How am I to decide? It changes with season, I say. I particularly like tulips during the spring, but during the summer...when it is getting warmer, I find that I grow more partial towards roses."

He walked past me. He has a very imposing figure, Tom Riddle, tall but strongly built. His destination, it seemed, was the shed at the other end of the garden. I watched him stroll in and emerge with a knife. He scanned the whole of the area before nodding to himself and walking back to where I stood.

"What are you doing?" I asked quietly.

But the answer was quite evident. He knelt on the gravel beside me and fingered the rosebush, searching for a point of attack. The knife sliced through the stems, and I heard a sound that I knew too well: that gasp as a thorn presses against one's skin. After standing up and brushing off his suit, he held out to me six roses wrapped in a dirtied handkerchief. They were a touch pinker than my dress, their outermost petals beginning to open and reveal the soft folds within. He pressed them into my hands. The fabric that cradled them was spotted with red.

"You're bleeding, Mr. Riddle," I whispered.

"Please, 'Tom' will do."

"I have been acquainted with you but a morning. I - it wouldn't be at all appropriate."

He grimaced. "Was it at all appropriate for me to descent to do servants' work by cutting you these roses? Of course not. The Riddles' son should never have to get as dirty as I am now. But I - I hope the roses...are they to your liking?"

They smelled as only roses can. From beyond their sweet haze, I caught his sight of his dark eyes watching me, following the fluttering of my eyelashes, the swish of my skirt. The thought rose unbidden from inside: he is smitten with me.

It remains a thought enough to make any girl blush.

"They are beautiful."