I Know a Secret/Chapter 6

by Christopher Darlington Morley

Paper Daffodils

HERE was once a man who was not clever at growing flowers. I don't know what it was about him that made it impossible for him to have a really nice garden. When other people's rhododendrons were full of big red blossoms, his own never got beyond sticky green spikes. His rose bushes had plenty of buds, but small unexplained insects ate most of them before the petals opened. He tried for years to grow sweet peas, but they did not seem happy. Instead of climbing up like proper sweet peas they lay flat on the ground and tangled themselves nervously together. Their little soft tendrils clutched miserably at each other like tiny hands.

For a while this man thought well of his irises, but dogs noticed them too. From all round the neighbourhood dogs came and lay on them. Dogs love flowerbeds, especially when the earth has been freshly dug and raked. And a young iris, after having been slept on by a heavy dog, is never quite the same. Or perhaps the word would go round among the truck drivers that it would be interesting to drive their great flat wheels over the edge of one of his flowerbeds or grass-plots.

Sometimes, to have a little colour in his garden, he would go down to Mr. Steiger's greenhouse and bring home a lot of flowers already in blossom. Then he hunted for the trowel and the rake, which took some time. He had some very nice tools in his garage, but they were all wandering tools. They did not like to stay in one place. The trowel, when no one was looking, would slip off and lie under a tree somewhere in the back lot. It was a hide-and-seek trowel, and very clever. When he found the trowel (he never did find the rake, not that special little rake he was so fond of) it was getting dark, but he planted the flowers and watered them. For several days they seemed bright and gay, but gradually they dwindled. They got pale and meagre. He had to content himself mostly with pansies and marigolds, because these will flourish almost anywhere.

This behaviour on the part of his flowers rather troubled him. Sometimes he said to himself that it was because the soil was poor. Sometimes he believed it might be that the flowers were offended because he made mistakes about their names. I think myself it was simply because he was the kind of person to whom awkward things happen. You know, some people understand life so well that everything is always all right. Their clothes, their houses, their gardens, their fingernails, are always neat and well-attended. Their cars are shiny. Then there are other people to whom embarrassing things happen.

Whatever the reason, it was so. He was not clever at growing flowers. There were other things that grew round him plentifully. He was good at raising books, for instance. It was extraordinary. Every day or so a truck would drive up and leave books for him; he didn't even have to pay for them. It was all part of the magic. Books sprouted all round him. Also people who wanted to sell vacuum cleaners or real estate. And as for the telephone: if telephone calls had been flowers he would have had one of the finest gardens in the world.

But in his ragged garden he had done rather well with his daffodils. He had planted the bulbs too deep, so they were always later than the neighbours' daffies, and every spring he had to scratch away the earth to help them through; but he enjoyed them all the more when they came. Under his dining-room windows, on the south side of the house, they grew and trembled in the breeze. He was so used to his flowers being less beautiful than other people's that he almost imagined there must be some mistake. He would go out to look at them, and say to himself "If they knew they were mine they wouldn't dare be so lovely."

It's hard to know what to do about daffodils. It is true that they are beautiful in a bowl in the dining room, and very likely people drink their milk and finish their spinach better when there are flowers on the table. Yet they are so graceful and perfect where they grow, especially if there aren't very many of them, it is difficult to decide whether to pick them. It is a hard problem, one of those problems that make life interesting.

That was the problem he was thinking about. There were ten daffodils under the dining-room windows. He had watched them growing and the buds fattening, and now they were all in flower. Should he pick some for the table, or should he leave them there? While he was wondering about this, the problem was settled for him by someone else—as it so often is. He came home late one afternoon, and going round the house to see what everything looked like he was horrified. All but two of the daffodils had been picked. Not only that, two or three of their bright yellow heads, pulled off short from the stalks, lay fading on the ground. Evidently, in spite of all he had said, the children had been at work. He was greatly upset.

He almost rushed indoors to make an uproar, but he paused to consider what was best to do. In the bathroom upstairs he could hear Helen and Blythe cackling gaily as they took their bath; and he knew that Louise, who was a quick undresser, would be already in bed reading Sparrow the Tramp or some other favourite book. It seemed a pity to break in upon the cheerful bedtime with a scolding. Daffodils are important, but children are important too. He lit his pipe and walked round the house to think.

The next day was Saturday, and after breakfast he called the children into his den.

"It's a very queer thing," he said. "Perhaps it's some kind of magic; but I was looking at the daffodils and there don't seem to be as many as there were."

Two of the children opened their mouths, and he knew pretty well what they were going to say. So he hurried to go on talking before anyone could say anything disagreeable about Someone Else Did It In Spite Of My Telling Her Not To.

"It appears to me," he said, "that around this house there is something dangerous that happens to daffodils. I don't know what it can be, but we will have to do our best. Here are pencils and crayons and some sheets of thick paper. I want you to draw some daffodils and colour them. We'll cut them out and put them in the ground just where the real ones were."

Helen and Blythe were too young to see in this anything more than a new game, and they were full of enthusiasm. Christopher and Louise looked at each other a bit queerly, and then started to say something that began with a But. Again he hastened to interrupt them.

"Come on," he said. "Let's see how nicely you can make them. Now we'll have a daffodil bed that we can all really enjoy."

They sat round the dining-room table, with a real daffodil to copy, and for some time there was silence. Presently there was a tap at the big sliding door of the den, and their father arranged his face in an expression of deep thoughtfulness. They came in with their drawings. The paper daffodils were really very well done. It is true that Blythe's were a bit scrawly, and coloured red and blue, but it was not her fault if the older children had been using all the greens and yellows. Helen's were fat and bushy, Louise's tall and wavy. Christopher's were so lifelike that I think he must have been doing pictures of daffodils at school.

They were all cut out very carefully with scissors, and then the planting was done. The wandering trowel was found, and little holes were dug. The paper daffodils were set in a row at the front of the bed, in the best of the earth so they would flourish. They looked very well. Helen's were not quite so bright a yellow. Perhaps hers had grown in a poorer soil; or perhaps Christopher and Louise had kept the yellowest yellow crayon for themselves.

The moist earth was raked and smoothed around them and they fluttered in the fresh April air. Donny, suspecting a festival of some sort, barked approval. They all stood to admire the display, and then the family went on about its affairs. There was something a little thoughtful about Louise's face as she went looking for a cat to hug.

It was rainy that Sunday: driving April rain and gale. For several days the garden was mostly mud, and there were other things to think about. Then, when dry weather returned, a sodden scrap of paper was found blowing about behind the house. It was part of a daffodil, blown clean off its paper stalk. As Christopher truly said when he revisited the place, now the daffodils were "not so realistic." Those that remained were faded and crumpled and smeared.

And then the paper daffodils were forgotten. Months later, raking under the rhododendrons, their father found a piece of one, and a queer little pain ran round in his mind. Donny, who was rooting and grubbing and snuffing not far away, asked him what was wrong.

"Well, Donny," he said, "it's awfully easy to tear up beautiful things, but very hard to put them back."

Donny only grunted.

"Yes," says Christopher, "but you haven't told quite all the story. As soon as the paper daffodils were planted, Donny went and lay on them just as though they were real."

Certainly it was the greatest compliment Donny could pay them.