The Memory Garden (39 page)

‘And he came two, maybe three times,’ Cara was saying, waving her hands around, her eyes shining with the drama.

‘Who, Cara?’ said Mel urgently, looking up from her search for any interesting post amidst the bills and the mail shots. She had quickly established there was nothing from Patrick. But had she really expected anything? After all, it seemed that all the time she had been unwell, he had never rung once. But now hope was momentarily revived. ‘Who came?’

‘Your man, Jake, ringing on the doorbell,’ squealed Cara. ‘Who else? How many men do you have?’

‘None, at the moment,’ said Mel, forlorn. ‘What did you tell him?’

‘That you were away in Paris, staying with your French lover, what else?’

Mel rolled her eyes. Just the sort of thing the excitable Cara might indeed have said. ‘Thanks for dealing with the post, anyway. Hope it hasn’t been a pain.’

‘No, no. Good thing your sister rang to tell me where you were or, whoosh, another lot of letters would have flown away to your holiday place.’

‘It wasn’t a holiday, Cara,’ said Mel. ‘But thanks. I’m really grateful.’

‘So, Jake has been looking for you!’ said Aimee, after Cara had left. ‘Have you been in touch, you naughty girl? Come on, spill the beans.’

Mel explained about Jake’s book deal but said she hadn’t had any communication with him since. ‘Mind you, I haven’t looked at my emails for ages.’

While Aimee made them both some tea Mel turned on her laptop and found that Jake had, in fact, emailed her twice.
I thought we could meet for that drink before term started
, he had written in the first message, then,
Sounds stupid, but I’ve lost your mobile number. In fact, I’ve lost my mobile. Ridiculous, isn’t it, how much your life depends on a small hunk of metal.

‘He wants to meet up,’ she told Aimee.

‘Mel.’ Worry made Aimee’s small pretty face crease up like a King Charles Spaniel’s. ‘Be careful, won’t you?’

‘Yeah, sure.’ Her voice sounded flat, and Aimee put out her hand and touched Mel’s arm.

‘It’s not him you’re thinking about, is it?’

‘No,’ said Mel, and gazed out of the window to where a plastic carrier bag stuck flapping in a dead tree in the garden of the dilapidated house opposite.

Aimee sighed.

‘Perhaps I should contact him,’ Mel whispered, almost to herself, then she shivered, remembering Bella, remembering that last night. ‘No. I don’t think I can. I mustn’t.’ The plastic carrier bag flapped frantically, as though trying to break free from the tree.

‘Mel.’ Aimee’s face was an unreadable mix of emotions. ‘It’s probably not the moment, but there’s something I want to tell you.’

‘What?’ She felt her own smile grow, a pale reflection of the grin that split Aimee’s face. ‘It’s Stuart, isn’t it? Come on, tell me everything, you dark horse.’

‘I didn’t like to. Not with you . . .’

‘Oh, never mind about that. I need cheering up. Tell me. You’re getting married, aren’t you?’

Aimee’s smile faltered. ‘He’s asked me, yes.’

‘And what have you said?’

‘That I want to say yes, but—’

‘But what? I thought you were keen.’

‘I am, I really am, but . . . well, Callum doesn’t like the idea. I don’t blame him really. It’s not all that long ago since his mum left, and now his dad wants to marry his teacher.
Bleaugh
.’

Mel laughed at Aimee’s impression of a disgusted teenager.

‘But if Callum wasn’t in the equation, would you want to marry Stuart?’

‘Yes, I would. He and Maria, his wife, only stayed together for so long because of Callum. Then she found someone else, so that’s why they broke up in the end. It’s all surprisingly friendly.’

‘Does Callum see his mother?’

‘Oh yes, but he didn’t like her new bloke. That’s why he stayed with his dad.’

‘And now that’s changing, too. I see. Poor boy.’

‘What should I do?’

‘I don’t know. Stick it out. Perhaps it’s a question of Callum getting used to you.’

‘I suppose that’s what I think. But what happens if he doesn’t?’

They were silent for a moment.

‘Come on,’ said Aimee, leaping up and gathering up the mugs. ‘You can’t stay here – I’ve decided. I’m due at Stuart’s for supper. You’re coming, too, and then you and I, we’ll go and stay at mine. No arguments.’

Twelve o’clock and the students swirled around Mel like the tide around a rock. Not that she felt very rocklike at the moment, more like a pebble rolled over and over by the current. Somehow she had taught her first seminar since March, and it had gone well, she had detected their interest. But now the black feeling swelled in her again, and she picked up the rag to wipe the whiteboard as though it weighed pounds.

Everything had changed, it seemed to Mel, as she had walked into the college last week. David’s friendly face had gone. She had missed his retirement party in the summer. In his place was John O’Hagen, brisk, militant, too ready to exercise his new found power by making unnecessary changes, the more longstanding members of Faculty grumbled. The second change was that a full-time post had been created for Rowena.

‘Student numbers are up. The Art History courses are very popular,’ was how John put it to Mel a few days ago.

‘Glad to see all the work I’ve put in over the last few years has paid off,’ she pointed out. ‘But you might have consulted me.’

‘You weren’t here,’ he retorted.

‘I was an email away,’ she snapped, but John’s attention span was short.

‘I’m sorry if you feel that,’ he said, getting up to indicate the interview was over, ‘but what’s done is done and I’m sure we’ll all be glad of Rowena’s help. She has many useful suggestions.’

Mel was thinking over this conversation as she finished wiping the board.

‘Got a moment?’ A head poked around the door: a halo of blonde curls held back by an Alice band with a big tartan bow. Rowena.

‘Mel, how did the seminar go? You look shattered, dear.’ Rowena’s light voice with its sibilant sounds could only be called simpering. And that bow, Mel loathed it. All right on a ten-year-old girl, but . . . The worst thing was that her innocent looks completely belied her poisonous nature.

‘It was fine, thank you, Rowena.’

‘Good. I’ve just been to see John. I thought I’d share these with you.’ She passed a couple of printed emails over to Mel. ‘I have some ideas, you see, about how we could improve the ways these seminars are taught.’

Annoyance lashed tiredly inside Mel. She glanced down at the emails.
Student evaluations agree . . . Reshape . . . new technology . . . could be more inspiring . . .
The phrases leaped to her eyes.

‘Why didn’t you discuss this with me?’ she said to Rowena coolly.

‘Well, that’s what I’m doing now,’ said Rowena, with a stagy act of being stung. ‘John thought you should see them.’

Suddenly, Mel didn’t care about treading softly.

‘Rowena, I’m sure you’re acting for the best, but let me be frank. I have been here teaching these courses for ten years. You have been here for precisely five minutes.’

‘As you know, I was covering your classes when you were off a couple of years ago. When your mother—’

‘But that hardly gives you the right to go behind my back and try to change everything.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think you would see it like that. I was only trying to help.’

‘Well, don’t.’ She sighed, then said, ‘It’s not that I’m against the idea of change. I suppose we’d better sit down together sometime, but your ideas are not as straightforward as you think. You need to know the background.’

And the last thing I need is you and John caballing behind my back, she thought fiercely as she grabbed her bags, nodded to Rowena and marched out. She walked down the corridor, seeing no one and nothing, unlocked her office door, slipped inside and shut it behind her. She dropped onto her sofa, glad to have a few moments to herself.

Almost at once there came a knock on the door. ‘Hello,’ she called wearily and the door opened. It was Jake.

He seemed to fill the doorway, his electro-magnetic aura as highly charged as ever. He had grown his blond hair and wore it neatly cut, brushed back, but otherwise he was just the same.

Placing his forearms on each side of the doorway like the chained Samson about to push apart the pillars of the Temple, he said in a mock American accent, ‘Welcome back, Miss Elusive. How’ve you been?’

Mel stood up and crossed her arms, regarding him steadily. ‘I’ve been busy,’ she said.
‘Got time for that drink this evening?’ he said, and she was amazed at the ease with which he asked, as though they were back at the beginning of their courtship rather than exhuming the decayed remains.
‘No,’ she said shortly. ‘I’ve a lecture to prepare tonight.’ Which was true up to a point, but the lecture was already prepared – all she had to do was replace a couple of slides on the Powerpoint presentation since she had found better examples.
Jake tapped the doorway impatiently and glanced at his watch. ‘Tomorrow then. Wednesday – no, busy Wednesday, I think. Thursday?’
In the end she agreed to Thursday. ‘A drink ,’ she told him, fixing stern eyes upon him. ‘To celebrate your book deal.’
He looked slightly disconcerted , then said uneasily, ‘Sure. See you then,’ and moved away. Getting up to shut the door , she watched him prowl away down the corridor , like a graceful leopard.

It was a warm September evening, so she ate a paltry supper of scrambled eggs and beans on the last crust of bread and went out to scrutinise the garden. Rowena, Green Fedora, Jake. The irritations of the day whirled round her head. Hard work was the remedy.
It was satisfying taking out her feelings by ripping at the tangles of weeds, hacking back shrubs. After a while she tuned in to the variety of sound around her – the thud-thud of distant music, a man and a woman next door over the fence arguing in some harsh language she didn’t recognise, a football crashing against wood and concrete, the shriek of a drill on brick or stone in some house across the way.
All so different from the peaceful garden at Merryn and yet, as she grew calmer, she noticed the twittering of a blackbird, the primitive smell of the earth, the sharp stink of sap. All served to take her right back to Lamorna.
It was hard not to think about Patrick. In truth, she never stopped, though she worried sometimes that her body’s memories were mixing him up with Jake. The times, for instance, when she awoke in her wide bed and reached out, half-expecting there to be someone beside her: was it Patrick or Jake she was looking for? When she arrived home, part of her wouldn’t have been surprised to find that her flat door wasn’t double-locked, that there was someone waiting to welcome her. Who?
But when she lay awake at nights, hugging a pillow, waiting for sleep to overcome her, it was Patrick she imagined close to her, kissing her, his particular smell of wool and spearmint toothpaste that flooded her mind and caused her tears to flow. And she would wonder again why he had never written, never phoned, never come to find her, then decided she knew why, really. I must get over it, over it, she would tell herself fiercely.
And now she allowed her mind to drift on to Jake.
Thinking of him confused her. Jake, Patrick, Patrick, Jake. As one drifted out of focus, the other clarified in her mind.
As twilight deepened, she put away her tools and stamped down the culled weeds to squash them into a bin bag which she tied up and set aside for recycling. When she went inside, the phone was ringing. It was her father.
‘Dad? Is everything all right? ’ She hadn’t heard from him since the French postcard.
‘Mmm? Yes, yes, of course. Hadn’t spoken to you for a while, so I thought I’d ring and see how you are. Will said you’d been unwell.’
Master of the understatement, her father.
‘A rather stressful summer,’ she admitted, knowing he wouldn’t want the messy details. ‘But I’m fine now.’
‘Good, good,’ said her father. ‘I’m coming to London next week for a conference,’ he went on. ‘Thought we might have dinner one night.’
‘All right. When?’
‘Tuesday?’
‘Yes,’ she said, flicking through her diary, seeing with a little jolt, Jake’s name scrawled in for this coming Thursday.
‘I’ll ring you when I’ve booked somewhere,’ he said.
‘Fine. How’s Stella?’ she asked politely. She liked her poised, carefully coiffed stepmother, but had never really got to know her well.
‘Stell? Fine , fine, busy with some blasted charity ball we have to go to this weekend. House is full of boxes of stuff and the telephone doesn’t stop ringing with women wittering on about flower arrangements. I’m a stranger in my own home.’
Well, no surprise there, said Mel to herself as she put down the phone. He never was around much for anyone. What might he be wanting to see her for now?

‘There’s a new place opened near the tube station,’ said Jake as he collected her from her office at six o’clock on Thursday. ‘If you don’t mind the walk.’ They glanced out of the window to see grey London drizzle and Mel reached for her ancient umbrella.

The wine bar was already filling up with groups of young people from local offices but Jake effortlessly staked a table and signalled to a waitress who came over at once. Mel had noticed the girl’s eyes fall on Jake from the moment they walked in.

Had he always fussed so much over the wine list, she wondered, sitting back and letting him argue the relative merits of the St Remy over the house Cabernet Sauvignon. Patrick had always studied the list quickly and made a snap decision. In the end she broke in, saying, ‘I should really be getting this as it’s a celebration,’ and ended the discussion by ordering champagne.

‘It’s really brilliant about your book deal,’ she said, after the waitress brought over the bottle in an ice-bucket, with two flutes. ‘Here’s to you,’ and they clinked glasses.

‘And to you, too,’ said Jake quietly, engaging her eye. ‘Your return to the real world. I’ve missed you, you know.’

Mel swallowed a great gulp of champagne and the bubbles went up her nose. Coughing and spluttering, it was a while before she recovered.

‘Sorry,’ she said, taking the wad of rough paper serviettes he offered her. She remembered Patrick’s soft handkerchief, which he lent her the first time they met, and a shaft of misery pierced her heart.