She heard the gate before she saw anyone. It was a particular sound, the gate at the garden's entrance, which had a specific creak at the top of its swing that she had been meaning to fix for two years and had never gotten around to because it had become useful, a small reliable announcement that something was entering. She was on her knees in the east facing bed when it sounded, her hands in the soil around the base of the climbing rose she was repositioning, and she looked up.
A girl stood at the gate.
Young. Seventeen, perhaps eighteen, with the particular look of someone who had been walking for a while and had arrived at a place they had been looking for and were now slightly uncertain about having found it. She had a canvas bag over one shoulder and her coat was buttoned all the way to the top and she was holding a piece of paper in both hands.
She looked at Lisa. Lisa looked at her.
The girl glanced down at the paper, then back at Lisa, then at the garden around her with the quick evaluating attention of someone who genuinely noticed plants, whose eyes moved to them naturally and specifically the way other people's eyes moved to faces.
ELD: Is this- sorry. Is this Lisa's cottage?
LSA: Yes.
ELD: I saw the advert. About the gardening position.
Lisa sat back on her heels.
LSA: What advert.
The girl looked at the paper again, with the expression of someone who was beginning to suspect they had made an error but was not yet certain enough to retreat.
ELD: The one in town. Posted on the board outside the market. It had the address and everything.
LSA: I didn't post an advert.
A pause. The girl looked at the paper. She looked at Lisa. She looked at the garden with its repositioned plants and its freshly turned beds and the particular evidence everywhere of someone who knew exactly what they were doing with growing things.
ELD: Oh.
She said it quietly. Not dramatically, just a small sound of recalibration.
ELD: I'm sorry. I must have the wrong- I'll go.
She was already turning back toward the gate with the dignity of someone removing themselves from an awkward situation before it became more awkward, and Lisa watched her go and opened her mouth to say nothing, because there was nothing to say, because she had not posted an advert and did not need a gardener and the girl should go back to wherever she had come from.
ELD: Your veronica is struggling.
She said it without turning around. Matter of fact. Not a criticism, just an observation, the way you noted something you had noticed because noticing it was simply what you did. Lisa looked at the east facing bed. At the veronica, small and pale in its ground, its stems still thinner than they ought to be.
LSA: I know.
ELD: It wants more space between it and the salvia. The salvia's root system is competitive. It's taking more than its share.
A pause. Lisa looked at the salvia. She looked at the veronica. She thought about the distance she had given it when she replanted it, which she had thought was sufficient, and looked at the salvia's spread and considered the possibility that it was not sufficient. She did not say anything. The girl had turned back now, not all the way, just enough to see the bed she was talking about, her eyes on the plants rather than on Lisa, which was somehow easier than the alternative.
ELD: Sorry. I shouldn't have- you clearly know what you're doing. I'll go.
LSA: Move the salvia if you think it needs moving.
She said it before she had decided to say it. It arrived the way things arrived when you were not standing guard over them, without permission, simply present. The girl was quiet for a moment. Then she set her bag down by the gate and came into the garden. She moved through it with the quiet careful attention of someone who understood that a garden was not empty space between plants but a system of relationships, each thing in conversation with the things around it, and you did not move through it carelessly. She stopped at the salvia and crouched down and looked at the root situation with both eyes and then glanced at the veronica and made a small sound that was not quite a word.
ELD: Yes. This is the problem.
LSA: How do you know?
ELD: The veronica's color. It's reaching but it's not getting what it reaches for. Something's taking it.
She looked up at Lisa, briefly, the way she looked at things briefly before looking back at what she was actually studying.
ELD: I can move it if you want. The salvia. It won't take long.
Lisa looked at her. She looked at the veronica. She looked at the girl crouched in her garden with her coat still buttoned all the way to the top and her canvas bag by the gate and her eyes on the roots with the specific attention of someone who was not performing knowledge but simply had it.
LSA: Don't uproot it. Just move it back a foot.
ELD: Yes.
She worked quietly. She did not ask for tools, found the hand trowel Lisa had left in the bed herself without being directed to it, and moved the salvia back with the careful efficiency of someone who had done this before, who understood the particular balance of disturbing a root system as little as possible while still moving it where it needed to go. Lisa watched. She told herself she was watching to make sure it was done correctly. That was partly true. When it was done the girl sat back and looked at the space she had created and then at the veronica and then at Lisa.
ELD: That should help.
LSA: We'll see.
A silence. Not uncomfortable exactly. Just present, the way silences were in gardens, where the quiet was filled by other things, the movement of air and the small sounds of living things, and did not require filling by people.
ELD: I really am sorry about the advert. Someone must have made a mistake.
LSA: Someone must have.
The girl picked up her bag. She looked at the garden once more with those specific eyes, the ones that moved to plants naturally, and something in her expression was reluctant in a way she was clearly trying not to show.
LSA: Be here at seven tomorrow.
The girl looked at her. Lisa had already turned back to the climbing rose.
LSA: The east beds need attention before the afternoon heat. Seven is early enough.
A pause. Then, quietly, with the particular restraint of someone who was pleased but was not going to make it obvious:
ELD: Yes. Seven.
The gate creaked at the top of its swing as she left. Lisa listened to her footsteps go down the path and turned back to the climbing rose and put her hands in the soil and felt her power move through it and said nothing else and did not need to.