The Savage Garden

reinforcing my own suspicions about the good reverend).

    Mr. Atherton, tall, lean and slightly stooped by his seventysome years, approached the podium without the aid of his walking stick. He graciously accepted the certificate (and the bottle of elderflower cordial that accompanied it), then returned to his chair. I happened to be seated beside him that warm, blustery afternoon, and while the canvas snapped in the wind and the vicar slurred his way through a heartfelt tribute to all who had submitted Victoria sponges, Mr. Atherton inclined his head toward me, a look of quiet mischief in his eyes.

    'Do you think they'll ever forgive me?' he muttered under his breath.

    I knew exactly whom he was talking about.

    'Oh, I doubt it,' I replied, 'I doubt it very much.'

    These were the first words we had ever exchanged, though it was not the first time I had elicited a smile from him. Earlier that summer, I had caught him observing me with an amused expression from beneath a Panama hat. He had been seated in a deck chair on the boundary of the cricket pitch, and a burly, lower-order batsman from Droxford had just hit me for 'six' three times in quick succession, effectively sealing yet another ignoble defeat for the Hambledon 2nd XI.

    Adam turned the sheet over, expecting to read on. The page was blank.

    'That's it?' he asked.

    'Evidently,' said Gloria. 'What do you think?' 'It's good.'

    'Good? 'Good' is like 'nice.' 'Good' is what mothers say about children who don't misbehave. Boring children! For God's sake, Adam, this is my novel we're talking about.'

    Probably best not to mention the overzealous use of commas. 'Very good. Excellent,' he said.

    Gloria pouted a wary forgiveness, her breasts straining against the material of her cotton print dress as she leaned toward him. 'It's just the opening, but it's intriguing, don't you think?'

    'Intriguing. Yes. Very mysterious. Who is this Mr. Atherton with the prodigious marrows?'

    'Aha!' she trumpeted. 'You see? Page one and you're already asking questions. That's good.'

    He raised an eyebrow at her choice of adjective but she didn't appear to notice.

    'Who do you think he is? Or more to the point: What do you think he is?'

    She was losing him now. The wine wasn't helping, unpalatably warm in the afternoon heat, a wasp buzzing forlornly around the neck of the bottle.

    'I really don't know.'

    Gloria swept the wasp aside with the back of her hand and filled her glass, topping up Adam's as an afterthought.

    'He's a German spy,' she announced.

    'A German spy?'

    'That's right. You see, it's wartime—1940, to be precise—and while the Battle of Britain rages in the skies above a small Hampshire village, an altogether different battle is about to unfold on the ground. As above—'

    '—so below.'

    Were they really quoting Hermes Trismegistus at each other over this?

    'I think it was Kent,' said Adam.

    'Kent?' 'The Battle of Britain—Kent and a bit of Sussex, not Hampshire.'

    This news was clearly something of a blow to Gloria.

    'Well, maybe some of the planes, I don't know, went astray or something.'

    Adam looked doubtful.

    'Damn,' said Gloria, 'I wanted dogfights in the sky.'

    'Then move it to Kent.'

    'It has to be Hampshire.'

    'Why?'

    He regretted the question almost immediately.

    'Because it's all about a secret submarine base in Portsmouth harbor.'

    Was this really where two years of English literature studies had led her, all that Beowulf and Chaucer, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: to a secret submarine base in Portsmouth harbor?

    'What?' demanded Gloria warily.

    'I was just thinking,' he lied, 'that your narrator's a man. Unless she's a woman who happens to play cricket for the village team.'

    'So?'

    'It's a challenge, I imagine, writing a male narrator.'

    'You don't think I'm up to it?'