“So I see,” said the recipient of this mark, “and I suppose she’ll be off her food for weeks too, like last time. What on earth do you feed them?”
Mrs Grantham smiled, and batted away the question as if it were a compliment.
“There’s a lot to be said, in truth, for the falling in with the rhythm of the seasons,” she confides over a warm cup of jasmine tea, over the strangulated cries that emanate constantly from the bottom of her garden. “I don’t mean going organic, or no-dig gardening, or anything so fashionable, of course; no, I will lay the right poison for any pest; but something more deeply natural. Destroy everything unwanted that intrudes, without mercy; bestow unlimited love on what you wish to remain.”
“Mrs Grantham,” I say, gently.
“… which is why they come back, you know,” she continues, “sometimes so quickly, and with such a look in their eyes – goodness knows! And of course I welcome them. They all of them have their rightful place. And it keeps me out of trouble, I should say!”
“Mrs Grantham,” I say again, more firmly this time, “do you know why I’m here?”
She looks blankly at me, and takes a deliberate sip of that tea. Is it jasmine after all, I wonder, as its persistent scent rises around me. My own cup is empty, though I do not recall drinking from it.
“There were some – unkind – reviews,” says Mrs Grantham, almost dreamily, “though I don’t pay any attention. My daughter – she lives abroad – read one out to me. It was most unfair. Personal, in fact – so sad that one cannot be an individual nowadays. Perhaps my manner is a little strange to some. I live with animals, after all; it would be rather surprising if something of their world had not rubbed off on me, after all this time. When I am not gardening, you know, I am with them: I go from cage to cage, stroking their faces and cradling them, feeding them those treats that they love. And I am reassured, always, by the fact – the indisputable fact! – that they always come back. And that they never, ever want to leave.”
She gathers up the teacups and gives me a sidelong, but still forensic, look. I feel lightheaded. There is a tapping sound as the heads of those monstrous lilies knock against the window pane. Perhaps – the scent of the lilies, the scent of the tea – is instead what I recognise as – ?