The Memory Garden (27 page)

The cat stretched and meowed to be let out. When Mel opened the door it slipped into the pouring rain, keeping close to the house for cover, and vanished round the corner. Where did it go? It never ate the food Mel put out or, for that matter, the little corpses it continued to drop at her feet. It must be getting fed somewhere else. ‘It’s like you,’ Patrick had breathed in her ear last week. ‘It just arrived and made itself at home.’

‘Oh, you.’ She tried to twist away, but he held her too firmly. ‘I seem to remember you begged me to stay. I’ll go if you want.’

‘Don’t you dare,’ he growled, moving his hands down her back and up her tight jumper. ‘There are things I want to do with you.’

She stood for a moment, eyes closed, remembering this, a slight smile on her face as she breathed in the fresh air of the garden, listening to the pattering rain, the flapping of wood pigeons in the trees, these sounds overlaid by the vibrations of some distant farm vehicle and the occasional roar of a passing car.

A gull’s harsh cry startled her and she glimpsed the bird wheel and vanish behind the trees in the distance. How different was the scene before her from even six weeks ago, she thought. Her flowerbed was coming alive with summer colour – the lobelia she had planted, marigolds, white alyssum – and buddleia and sistus were beginning to burgeon. But beyond, she and Patrick had cut vast swathes into the tangled wilderness, uncovering the path to the summerhouse, clearing the ground to prepare for grass, as the landscape architect Patrick consulted had suggested. During the last few days they had set to work to rescue the pond from its covering of brambles and to dig out layers of silt.

Another picture – Patrick working the little mechanical digger ‘like a boy with a shiny toy’, as she had teased him yesterday when he had worked late into the evening, gouging out mud and dead vegetation, dumping it in a skip. ‘Completely obsessed.’ Patrick had laughed, a carefree laugh of pure pleasure.

This morning, lying asleep, the early-morning light falling through the curtains across his face, he had looked very young, too, she thought now, the worry lines on his forehead and around his mouth ironed out, his skin glowing. She had watched him for a moment, learning the strong planes of his face, the soft lashes, the tender set of his mouth, before she fell back once more into slumber. When she woke again, he was kissing her goodbye. She touched her hand to her cheek, remembering. His fresh-shaved jaw had been cool against her sleep-warmed face.

‘Oh, don’t go yet,’ she had murmured, pulling him down to kiss him properly, breathing in the fresh lime smell of his shaving soap, but he had brushed his hand teasingly against her breast, causing desire to shoot through her once more, and pulled away, laughing.

‘Nine o’clock meeting, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘And I’ve got to look at the paperwork first.’ And he was gone, stumping down the stairs. A moment later, the front door banged and his footsteps receded across the gravel. A car door slammed, the engine roared away and in a moment there was silence. Only the tick of the alarm clock and the echo of his recent presence. She listened to the furniture settle and mourned.

Why did she feel this, this fear of losing him?

Sometimes, after making love, he held her so tightly it was frightening. ‘What is it? What is the matter?’ she would ask.

‘Nothing,’ he would say. ‘Nothing’s the matter. Just . . . sometimes I can’t believe that this is happening.’

‘Why can’t you?’ she would whisper, hugging him back, but he wouldn’t answer, and sometimes a great tremor would go through him as though he were repressing some feeling building up inside.

It was amazing, she thought now, shivering as she shut the kitchen door, that they had known one another for – what? less than three months – in this secret place shut away from the world. In some ways it seemed like a lifetime.

There were other occasions, Mel thought, as she washed up the breakfast bowls, when Patrick seemed to her unfathomable, when he would retreat deep inside himself, turning distant unhappy eyes upon her when she begged to know what was the matter.

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ he would mutter. ‘Don’t nag at me.’

And she would turn away quickly to hide the tide of panic rising in her chest, until he would see that he had hurt her and would wrap his arms around her in that frighteningly desperate way, murmuring, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s not you, it’s never anything to do with you. I’m sorry.’

It might be just his nature, these periods of loss of energy, of introspection. She had met his parents and his brother Joe and had been struck by the strange kinks of inheritance.

Frank Winterton, Patrick’s father, was a straightforward man in his seventies with a light manner and a firm handshake. His hair grew in a tuft in front like both his sons’ did, but was a shock of silvery-white now. Mrs Winterton, Gaynor, was more intense. Not a happy person, Mel thought, with pity, noticing the stiffness of her arthritic limbs.

‘I suppose you’re vegetarian or something,’ was her first comment to Mel, when she and Patrick arrived at their converted farmhouse for lunch two Sundays ago. ‘You all seem to be faddy these days, your generation.’

‘No, I’ll eat anything,’ was Mel’s mollifying reply but she could sense that Gaynor felt she was being tested.

When Mel praised the pretty farmhouse-style kitchen, Gaynor looked pleased but said, ‘I don’t suppose it’s as sophisticated as you’re used to.’

‘It’s beautiful, I love it,’ reassured Mel, and Gaynor seemed to relax a bit, but was still anxious serving up the food and took no compliment at face value. Perhaps she had passed some dark streak of unhappiness on to Patrick, her elder son.

Joe, on the other hand, had clearly taken after his father, happy to be living where he had grown up, a teacher married to another teacher, completely at ease tending to the demands of their eight-month-old son Thomas who, as the first grandchild, was the centre of attention.

It was so illuminating meeting people’s parents, Mel mused, as she sat down at the kitchen table again, staring at her laptop where the white doves of her screensaver now soared across the screen in never-ending flight. Now she knew where that funny gesture came from, that Patrick had sometimes of stroking the back of his neck. His father did exactly the same thing. Or the way he would stand hands in pockets – that was like Joe. Those were just superficial things, she knew, but there was something about the way he and his brother vied for their mother’s attention. What did that presage for his relationship with women in general, with Mel? She shrugged, pressing the touchpad on her laptop and causing the doves to freeze before they dissolved into some secret limbo inside her computer and her document appeared.

White birds. From time to time she and Patrick had glimpsed the albino blackbird in the garden, but never as closely as they had that day six weeks ago in the Flower Garden. It was so distinctive she was surprised it hadn’t succumbed to some predator, even in this garden haven. Every time she saw it she sent up a silent prayer for its survival.

As she moved to close her document, warning of an email pinged onto the screen. Chrissie was asking what she wanted for her birthday in four weeks’ time.

Mel smiled. Typical of her sister. It had never occurred to her to surprise Mel with a choice of present in her life. She pressed Reply and tapped out her answer:
No Marks & Spencer for miles here, so tokens no good. How about some earrings, say silver studs, if that’s OK
. She thought for a moment then typed,
Hope to see you soon
.

She had last seen Chrissie and her family nearly six weeks ago when she had journeyed up to London on the train just before the anniversary of their mother’s death. They had spent the heavy day together, the two of them, visiting the graveyard where Maureen’s ashes were buried, threading her favourite white lilies into the vase holes on the small gravestone. Later, she had stayed for supper with the family and they had spoken to William on the phone. She had felt too worn out with emotion to go on to her flat that night, so had slept in the spare bedroom with Rory’s fluffy polar bear for company.

It was strange returning home to Clapham the following day. When she unlocked the door, the flat smelled musty, and black dust from the street had settled in a fine layer on everything, separating her like a symbolic veil from her own past. The garden, too, looked abandoned, the grass a meadow, the beds a riot of nettles. Her neighbour, Cara, had gone back to visit her parents in Spain, so there wasn’t even the comfort of footsteps and opera music overhead.

She had only been in Cornwall for a month or so, but now, her mind full of Merryn and Patrick, she felt like a visitor in London. In those few weeks, she had bedded down in another world, put down thirsty roots, found underground water that slaked her sadness. On the phone to Patrick that night from Clapham she became overwhelmed by a longing to be back in the cold moonlit garden with the sound of running water, the great silent stars looking down overhead, the past whispering its secrets and the wilderness creeping its way to the door.

The following couple of days, Mel visited the city’s libraries to check a whole sheaf of queries she had compiled so far during the writing of her book. She also met up with Aimee and a number of other friends. Aimee had met a man she really liked.

‘Do you remember Callum, the boy I told you about, who came on my Paris trip? Well, it’s his father. He’s called Stuart.’

‘Are you allowed to go out with your kids’ parents, Aimee?’ asked Mel.

‘Mmm, not sure of the etiquette on that one. But I’m only teaching Callum this term, so I think it’s all right. I told you I had to speak to Stuart after the incident with the wine in Paris? Well, he came in to see me after school one day for a longer chat. It turns out he split up from his wife last year and Callum’s found it difficult to deal with. Then I bumped into him at a neighbour’s party. It went on from there, really.’

So Stuart was on the rebound, too. Like Mel and Patrick. ‘I’m really pleased for you, Aimee,’ Mel said, hugging her friend, ‘but don’t get hurt again.’

‘I could say the same to you,’ answered Aimee, who had heard all about Patrick, but she looked so happy that Mel knew at this point Aimee didn’t care.

She called into college where people greeted her with warmth, yes, but also with surprise. She was supposed to be having a term off, so what on earth was she doing back?

Once, an office door opened and Jake came out. They stared at one another for a long moment of surprise, but she was being talked at by Rowena , who was gushing on about a problem with one of the units she was teaching, and he merely raised an arm in greeting as he ushered in a waiting student, and when she finally escaped Rowena the door was closed. She stood outside, her hand raised to knock, intending to interrupt with a breezy, ‘Hello,’ in brazen demonstration that she was over him, that not only was she surviving without him, but that she was living well on it, the ultimate revenge. But she couldn’t quite muster the courage.
Ten-thirty. Carrie would be here any moment.
Now she finished up her email to Chrissie:
Why don’t you come and stay sometime in August? Patrick has plenty of room and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind, much love , Melxxxx
The kisses were to make up for the argument she and her sister had had on the way back from the churchyard. Mel had confided in Chrissie about Patrick and had been astonished to find that Chrissie disapproved.
‘Nick’s told me Patrick is in pieces about Bella. Do be careful. Never mind the fact you’ve just broken up with Jake.’
‘It’s fine , Chrissie .’ Said through gritted teeth. Why couldn’t her sister be pleased for her? ‘I’m quite capable of looking after myself.’
She was even proud of her behaviour when she arrived back at Merryn and turned on her computer, freezing in astonishment as an email from ‘Jake Friedland’ popped into the Inbox. She had stared at it for a moment. ‘Delete it, go on’, said a quiet voice in her head. ‘Not without reading it first,’ said another, sinuous voice. She double-clicked on it.
Hi, Mel. Sorry we didn’t get to speak when you came in today. Just back in harness here after the holiday and haven’t stopped to take breath. I’d heard you’re on sabbatical! Good for you. Hope all goes well. Freya was asking about you yesterday so I send one of her best princess kisses. Cheers, Jake.
Cheers? Cheers? After everything that had passed between them? This time she did delete the email, but the following day she rescued it from the Deleted box. She must be more adult about this. Cool. She tapped Reply.
Hi, Jake. Great to hear from you. I’m in Cornwall for a few weeks, as you might know , in a beautiful place, and my book’s going really well. So sweet of Freya. Give them both big kisses from me. All best, Mel.
She closed down the laptop as if frightened that the message would decide to try and come back. That was the way to handle him. Except she felt a bit ashamed of mentioning her book, which had a publisher when his didn’t.
The next day, however, there was another message from him. This one moaned about disorganised students and the lack of time to write, and she felt oddly guilty. This time she wrote back one line and hoped that that had got rid of him for the time being.
Now, as she heard Carrie’s car coming up the drive, she reread her concialitory email to Chrissie, added two more kisses for the boys to the end and pressed Send.

‘Just opposite the church, it is,’ said Carrie, as the car swung round another bend in the lane, the trees overhead dripping with the recent rain. A granite tower came into view on the right. ‘There.’

Mel felt the wheels plough into the muddy verge. ‘Oh yeuch,’ she said as she climbed out into the sludge. She tiptoed round and opened the door for Carrie to ease her bulk out, then lifted the seat to rescue the pot plant Mel had brought as a present for Aunty Norah.

‘We must take Norah as we find her,’ Carrie had explained. ‘She’ll be eighty-six now and I couldn’t get much sense out of her on the phone, she’s so deaf.’