The Memory Garden (20 page)

‘I see.’ Patrick said hardly anything on the way to the café. Can he be jealous of Matt, she asked herself, or is he just reserved?

‘Is there any water sport you don’t do, Matt?’ Mel said lazily, taking in the way the blue of his long-sleeved shirt perfectly suited his colouring. They were sitting at a table on the veranda of the café, looking out across the bay and drinking frothy hot chocolate.

‘Mmm, aqua-aerobics? Synchronised swimming?’ joked Matt. ‘I’ve tried most things though. But surfing I like best of all. Just me, the board and the sea. The nearest thing to flying, really.’

‘Skiing’s like that,’ said Patrick, nodding agreement. He was still frosty.

‘Not much of that in Cornwall,’ said Matt. He kept glancing from Mel to Patrick as though trying to work something out.

‘’Fraid not,’ said Patrick, stirring his cup. ‘It looks like my main hobby here will have to be gardening.’

‘I gather you’ve a big job on your hands there with Merryn.’

‘You haven’t seen the place?’ Patrick’s tone was sharper than the question warranted and Matt said hesitantly, ‘No – well, only from the road.’

Mel took refuge in her hot chocolate, embarrassed by Patrick’s jealousy. But then he seemed to relax, ‘I’m still deciding whether it’s a gift or a curse,’ he said. ‘But, do you know, Mel, I really want to get on with clearing the garden now.’

‘Fantastic,’ said Mel. ‘When shall we start?’ She had meant it as a joke and was surprised when Patrick took her question seriously.

‘I’ve borrowed an electric saw from a neighbour of Dad’s. I can make a start at least,’ he said. ‘Why not tomorrow? The forecast’s good. Do you mean “we”, Mel? Do you really want to help?’

‘You bet. Just tell me what to do.’

‘I’ll come if you like,’ broke in Matt. ‘It’ll be a change from washing up.’

‘That’s a good offer, but I’m sure we’ll manage.’ Again, that wariness.

‘No, seriously, I mean it,’ Matt said.

‘Well, all right, that’s great.’ Patrick still sounded unsure.

‘What will we do first?’ asked Mel, to move the conversation on.

‘What about the Flower Garden?’ said Patrick. ‘Not so many big trees to deal with there. I’ll need proper machinery for trees. And skips. And trucks for carting skips around. And diggers . . . In fact, professional tree surgeons. What am I starting?’ But there was a light of excitement in his eyes.

‘So this’ll be slashing and burning tomorrow, will it? Fantastic,’ said Matt, rubbing his hands. ‘I love a good bit of destruction.’

‘It’s supposed to be creative,’ Mel teased, then a thought struck her. ‘Patrick, wouldn’t it be best to draw a plan first? I mean, you want to be careful we don’t destroy clues of how the garden used to be, or any plants worth saving.’

‘You and I could do that when we get back,’ said Patrick, glancing at his watch. ‘Anyway, the two things run in tandem, don’t they? I mean, we won’t know what’s there until we start clearing. Though the photocopies from the Records Office will help.’

This reminded her. ‘Matt, there’s something else I must ask your mother. Would her aunt, you know, Jenna the maid’s daughter, be up to visitors, do you know? I would love to meet her and find out what she knows about Jenna’s life at the house.’

‘Aunt Norah? I can ask,’ said Matt, scraping back his chair and pulling his sunglasses out of his pocket. ‘I don’t think she’s ga-ga, but I haven’t seen her for years. Mum will know. Look, I must get back now. What time do you want me round tomorrow?’

‘Ten?’ hazarded Patrick.

Matt nodded, scooped his keys off the table and said goodbye. Was it Mel’s imagination or did his lingering look mean something?

Patrick finished his drink. ‘Brief look at Land’s End?’ he said to Mel. ‘It’s very near.’ He held out his hand.

‘You bet,’ she answered, taking it.

They were driving back in the late afternoon and Mel, whilst trying not to break any confidences, was telling Patrick about Irina’s anxieties for Lana.

‘There must be something we can give her in the way of practical advice,’ she said. ‘She won’t know the education system here.’

‘I can’t say I do either. She did bring me some prospectuses for music colleges a couple of months ago, asking what I thought. But Lana is too young for them at the moment. She’s only, what, eight or nine?’

Mel sighed. ‘Nine, yes, but I can see why Irina is worried. After all, if you have a gifted child then you want to map out a future for them. Make sure you’re pointing them in the right direction at every stage.’

‘She’s having lessons with an excellent teacher, by all accounts, and should listen to her advice. I don’t know, it’s none of our business but I think Irina is getting wound up unnecessarily. She says she is not being a pushy parent, but I wonder.’

‘Your Uncle Val helped them. Do you think that is why she came to you?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. After Val’s death I felt a little responsible for them. I couldn’t afford to go on employing her as housekeeper – I don’t need or want one – and she didn’t want to rent the cottage, so I arranged for her to come and clean regularly and look after the keys. It pays her something and it seems to work with her job at the hotel. And it helps me.’

‘She’s very nice, isn’t she? But a bit lost. The sort of person someone would want to look after.’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

Mel glanced at Patrick. There was an edge to his voice. Had there been something between him and Irina? His expression was unfathomable.

‘You sound hesitant.’

‘Not really. It’s just you can’t live other people’s lives for them.’

‘Of course not. But someone in a strange country, a single parent, coping on their own with no family support . . .’

‘Mmm. I don’t know, Mel. I am happy to help them up to a point, but I don’t want to get too involved. We don’t know everything – about Lana’s father, for instance. Or even how good Lana really is. We have to leave it up to the professionals to help, the violin teacher and the school. I don’t mind helping to fill in a few forms, but it’s not right to try to give advice.’

‘No,’ said Mel slowly. Then: ‘Oh look, the Merry Maidens!’ as they passed a sign near the brow of a hill. She remembered Matt mentioning them.

Patrick slowed the car. ‘We’ll stop if you like,’ he said. At the next opportunity he turned the car quickly, then drove back to park in the layby near the sign.

They climbed a stile to find themselves in a small field of cropped grass enclosed by hedgerow. In the middle stood a large circle of stones, all waist-high.

‘How many are there, I wonder?’ Mel said as they passed into the circle. When she turned round to start counting, she was dazzled by the sinking sun.

‘Nineteen,’ Patrick concluded. ‘The story, so old Jim told me, is that they were young women who dared to dance on the Sabbath. This was their punishment, to be turned to stone. And sometimes at midnight, even now, they dance.’

‘They do look a bit like dancing figures, some of them,’ she said, noticing the way the stones around them leaned and twisted, as though dipping and bowing to some unheard tune. ‘But they must have been very small girls.’

Patrick laughed. ‘There are the pipers as well,’ he said. ‘Another pair of stones, but bigger. In the field across the road there.’ He pointed.

Mel shivered. ‘It feels so primeval, doesn’t it? Do you think we’re on some ancient leylines? You’re drawn right back into the distant past standing here.’

‘The Cornish are Celts, don’t forget,’ Patrick agreed. ‘And sometimes it does feel as though that old pagan world is still going on around us. The Romans never really made it here and the established Church only had a tenuous hold. There are times when it seems as if the intervening centuries hardly happened, have scarcely touched this place.’ He ambled across to one of the stones and laid a hand on it as though it were sacred, thrumming with energy.

Mel closed her eyes. Sun spots moved across her retina. For a moment she imagined some force whirling around her, weak but still disturbing. Whether these stones really had been happy maidens defying the new Christian authority and being punished for it, or whether, as was more likely, they had been planted by some ancient peoples at the time of Stonehenge on this high place in the sight of the dying sun, it was a place of deep power. How would it feel to be here in the gentle light of dawn, in a midday thunderstorm? In the dead of night? It would be a place of many moods.

She opened her eyes.

‘Here,’ said Patrick. She walked over to the stone where he stood . ‘What are these?’ A scattering of tiny red beetles scurried across the top of the stone.

‘No idea,’ she said. She moved to the next stone. ‘They’re here, too, and here. They’re on all of them.’

A movement in the corner of her eye. A rabbit had ventured out at the far end of the field. Insects, rabbits . These creatures took no notice of ancient spirits. New life burgeoned. The past was gone.

‘Are you all right?’ said Patrick, touching her arm lightly.

She turned and looked up at him, so close she could see flecks of green and dark brown in his hazel eyes, the length of his soft eyelashes. He scanned her face, a flicker of tenderness crossing his features, and smiled gently. Then he put his arm around her and pulled her close a moment . ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’m going out later, so I’d better get back. But there's ginger cake for tea.'

The next morning, Mel woke early with a feeling of anticipation. It was how she felt as a child on the day she went on holiday, for example, or on a special birthday. Not the dread of the day of an exam or a difficult interview. Nor was there any trace of the depression of varying intensity that had descended most days over the last eighteen months. She was astonished to conclude that she was happy.

Sliding out of bed, she threw on the oldest clothes she could find – jeans, a fleece jacket and a stained T-shirt she pulled out of the dirty washing pile. How long had she been here now? Two weeks and two days. She was running out of clean clothes. She bundled up the pile and took it downstairs to sort for the washing machine.

It was the thought of starting work properly on the garden that was part of the reason for her happy feeling. Sure, she had worked on her flowerbed, had helped Patrick cut a way through the jungle to discover some of the secrets of the old walled gardens, but none of that had done more than to make the sleeping wilderness turn slightly in its slumbers, before sighing and falling again into unconsciousness. Today they would properly begin the task of reawakening.

The other reason for her happiness was Patrick. She remembered their day out yesterday, and how they had spent the early evening before he had had to go out to meet a friend.

‘You seem almost as fired up by this project as I am,’ he had joked as they worked together on the long dining-room table, poring over a strip of lining paper anchored down by books, drawing as accurate a representation as they could of the gardens of Merryn Hall. This wasn’t easy, but at least the map gave them an idea of the proportions of the garden and they could fill in some of the features that old Jim had described.

‘It’s wonderful, rebuilding a garden. Sort of life-affirming, don’t you think? And then there’s the mystery – what will we find underneath all the weeds?’

‘Not a grave, I hope,’ said Patrick soberly.

‘No.’ Mel felt troubled.

‘I still need to ask old Jim about that.’

Mel appraised the plan so far. To one side of the central shape of the house was sketched the rough shape of the Flower Garden, gates, sheds, greenhouses and trees all marked. Then the Vegetable Garden, the as-yet unknown boundaries a dotted line. The banks of rhododendron were next, followed by the laurel grove. Mel had sketched in the little seat they’d found and, in a moment of amusement, a giant spider. Patrick had looked at her intensely over the top of his reading glasses and made a stern face. ‘This is serious business, Ms Pentreath, and I won’t have any messing about.’ So then, sitting close to him at the table, alert to the times he brushed against her, she pointed out where he should draw the long pond, the sundial on the now-vanished lawn, the rockery and the ravine.

‘I’m sorry about having to go out this evening,’ Patrick said, unhooking his glasses, his face for a moment seeming naked and vulnerable until she got used to it again. ‘I met an old schoolfriend, Tom, when I was up seeing my parents, and he goes back to Bristol tomorrow. I’d ask you to come, too, but . . .’

‘I know, it’ll be one of those “Do you remember when Old Squiffy let off the stinkbomb?” evenings.’

‘Exactly. Why on earth did I say I’d go?’ he said gloomily.

‘Don’t you enjoy that sort of thing?’

‘Not really. I never seem to have the same memories as other people. I suspect everyone was having more fun than I was. I didn’t really start enjoying myself until I went to university. I’ve loved life most since starting work and can do more of what I please in my own time rather than someone else telling me what to do.’

That was one of the most revealing things Patrick had said, it occurred to Mel now.

At a quarter to ten, she was hanging up the last of the washing on the line at the back of the cottage when she heard the doorbell. She picked up the empty basket and hurried round to the front to find Matt lounging on the doorstep in long-sleeved T-shirt and faded jeans. Under one arm he carried a fusty old jacket that looked as though it had been left for years forgotten in some outhouse.

‘You’re in good time,’ she said. ‘Come in for a moment while I put this away.’

He seemed too full of energy for the little house. When Mel showed him into the living room, he threw himself onto the sofa, then kept standing up to investigate things – the TV remote control, the pictures on the wall, a magazine. Mel went out to the kitchen and he followed her, watching her tidy up, and was instantly drawn to the pile of books and papers she had left out on the table.

‘Laura Knight,’ he remarked, flicking through the pictures. ‘Everyone still goes on about her around here. By the way, I talked to Mum and she’s going to ring Aunty Norah for you.’