' The Gardner ' : Summary and Some Questions - Answers

The Gardener

( Gardener : Working with Flowers)

Main Characters:

• Helen Turrel (An unwed mother/ Michael's mother)
• Michael Turrel
• Priest in the village
• The Gardener

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Short Summary:

The Gardener is the story of Helen Turrel .She was an unwed mother. When she became pregnant, she was ashamed because she was not married. She didn't want any body to know anything about it. So she left her village in England and went to France to give birth. But she told her villagers that she was going to France for her treatment.

When she returned to England with her son, she told several lies about the baby to the villagers. She told that the boy the son of her brother (George ), who lived in India. The boy took birth in India after a few weeks George lost his life in a horse fall. So she took responsibility of the child . She gave some money to the child's mother and brought the child with her. The child was brought from India to France by a ship with the help of a nurse. But later she dismissed the nurse because  on the way to France the child had fallen ill due to the negligence of the nurse. The villagers believed the story because they knew that George used to live and work in India. Thus she  kept her son with herself. She even did not tell the child the truth. She said that she was his aunt. ( Although later the boy  knew the truth. ) 

The child was named Michael. With the passage of time Michael grew up. After completing his school when he was about to go to Oxford with a scholarship, he happened to join army in the first world war. Unfortunately he lost his life in an explosion of a shell and his body was buried in a cemetery. Helen was sent an official letter in which they had sent the watch of Michael, the address of the cemetery along with the row and the grave number.

Helen decided to visit the cemetery to offer flower on the grave. On the way she met an English lady Mrs. Scarsworth . She was a very talkative lady. She told Helen that she was also going to visit the graves for her friends who could not come themselves. They stayed in the same hotel. Later that night  the lady came in the room of Helen and said that she had been lying and now she wanted to be honest. She said that she was going to the graves to offer flowers on the grave of her special friend, perhaps her lover.

The next morning Helen walked to the graveyard It was so big. It was extended for hundreds of yards, and there were twenty one thousand graves there. She was quite confused , and didn't know how to find the grave of her son. 

At that time a gardener came there and asked whose grave she was looking for. She said that she was searching the grave of Michael Turrel, her nephew. She also gave him the row and grave number. The gardener looked looked at her. There was an infinite compassion in his eyes. He took her to the right grave and returned back from there and became busy with plants. Helen sat by her son's grave for some time  and returned from there . The man was still busy with plants . He looked at her with the same compassion in his eyes. Such a compassion is not possible in the eyes of human beings. It is possible only in the eyes of God. So we can conclude that the gardener was the Lord who had come to help Helen, forgiving all her sins.

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Question 1: Who was the Gardner?

Answer: The question who the gardener is  not clear because no information is given about it in the text. It is left for the readers to work it out. So we find many explanations to this question. Some people say that the gardener was only an employee who used to work there and to help people like Helen who used to come there to offer flowers on the graves of their near and dear ones. The other explanation is that he was the father of Michael. He had known about the death of his son before Helen could know. He was working there to to live by his son's grave. 

But my view is that the gardener was Lord Christ Himself. It is written in the text that there was infinite compassion in the eyes of the gardener when he looked at Helen. No human being can have such an infinite compassion in his/her eyes except the Lord. He had come there to help Helen. If gardener was Christ, it means that Helen was forgiven for her sins.

Question 2: What is the real relationship between Helen and Michael?

Answer: There is no doubt that the relationship between Helen and Michael is of mother and son. Helen was Michael's mother. But as she was an unwed mother, she was ashamed of the fact , so she hadn't declared it publicly. She had only said that Michael was her nephew. She had also said that she had managed to bring the child from India to to France and she was rearing him up.

Question 3: Why did Helen tell lies to her villagers? What were the lies? What is the truth behind each of the lies?

Answer: Helen became mother before her marriage. She was ashamed of the fact. She did not want others to know about it. So, she went to France to give birth to the child.  She told several lies about Michael and about his birth. Some of the lies are as follows:

• She had gone to France for treatment.
• Michael was her brother's son.
• Michael was born in India from an Indian lady, but in fact there was no Indian lady. Michael was her own son.
• She had given some money to the child's mother to allow her to bring the child with her. 
• She had managed to bring the baby from India to France with the help of a nurse .
• The baby had dysentery due to the carelessness of of the nurse so she had fired the nurse from job.

The truth behind these lies were that Michael was her own son. She had gone to France for giving birth. So there is no question of paying any money to any woman and there was no nurse at all.

She told all these lies because she was ashamed of  accepting that the boy was her own son.