Eden's Garden (38 page)

‘Oh?’ murmured David.

‘Indeed. It was quite famous in its day. Quite influential, in fact. It was undertaken in the last years of the nineteenth century by the last Meredith to take charge of the hospital in a personal capacity.’ He peered at the top sheet of paper. ‘Ah, that’s it: David Paul Meredith.’

‘My great-grandfather,’ said David, exchanging glances with Carys once more. ‘I was named after him.’

‘Were you indeed?’ Mr Jackson eyed David with a definite new respect. He opened up the box, laying out a series of smaller files on the table with reverential care. ‘It is a detailed study of the living conditions in Lambeth in the last years of Victoria’s reign. There were others, of course. But this was one that really seems to have caught the imagination. Your
great-grandfather
was a shrewd man. He employed an excellent photographer. Some of those images are shocking, even today.’

Carys looked down at the photographs set at regular intervals between close lines of text, punctuated with graphs and lists of statistics. Mr Jackson was right: the gaunt faces of children gazing out from broken-down streets and crowded rooms with plaster peeling from the walls reached out with a desperate pleading across the years.

‘And then, of course,’ said Mr Jackson, opening the next file with an even deeper reverence, if possible, ‘there are these. They’re the originals,’ he added, as David and Carys bent over the sheaves of drawings, some in pencil, others with a wash of watercolour. ‘The faces are quite remarkable.’

‘Does anyone know who did them?’ asked David, gazing down at the old woman hunched in a corner, the mother with her huge, misshapen hands, pulling washing from a copper, almost extinguished in steam.

Mr Jackson shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. They are only signed with the initials ‘HS’. Pity. There have been several attempts to identify the artist, but none have been successful. Whoever ‘HS’ was, he was a remarkable talent. But then so many promising young artists were killed at the front in the First World War. So many of that generation never reached their potential.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said David. And this time he could not keep the excitement from his voice. ‘But maybe not this one.’

 

‘That’s the story,’ said Carys, eagerly, as they finally said goodbye to an excitable – if slightly bemused – Mr Jackson, promising to return in a few weeks’ time, and made their way towards St Catherine’s Church. ‘That’s the story to bring visitors flocking to Plas Eden. That, with the statues, and the drawings from Ketterford. It’s more than just Pont-ar-Eden. It’s a whole picture of the lives of people – ordinary people – that most of the time are never seen. And seen from a woman’s viewpoint, too. It’s so rare for anything a woman did in the past to be valued enough to survive. It’s totally amazing.’

‘I agree,’ said David. ‘But I can’t see that stopping Edmund. If Plas Eden and the statues become famous, he might see that as even more excuse to cause trouble or to try blackmail. We could find ourselves looking over our shoulders for the rest of our lives.’

‘Let’s see what we find at St Catherine’s,’ replied Carys, pulling his arm through hers. ‘You heard what Mr Jackson said: your great-grandfather was a shrewd man. It’ll be there. You see, we’ll find it. I just know it will be there.’

 For my first wedding, I had a gown that cost a king’s ransom, and a carriage pulled by pure white horses, each sporting enough ostrich feathers to support a stricken Zeppelin in flight. For my first wedding, I arrived at a Treverick Church overflowing with flowers, guests sparkling with gold and jewels. After church came a sumptuous banquet in the great dining room of Treverick Hall, with a great tower of ice at its centre, and bowls overflowing with peaches, grapes and pineapples. Afterwards I accompanied my husband on a half-year tour of Italy, where I was paraded in my finery, for all to see.

For my second wedding there was nothing but a quiet church, and a single bouquet of red and white roses. Afterwards, my husband and I walked along the banks of the Thames, arm in arm, looking exactly what we were: an old married couple, content in each other’s company. Unremarkable. Unnoticeable. And yet, perhaps not.

Maybe it was the roses still held in my hand, or simply that pure, heartfelt joy cannot be concealed. Whatever it was, I saw intrigued glances turn, now and again, to follow us. The flower-seller by London Bridge pressed a bunch of lavender into my bouquet, waving away payment with a knowing smile. And as we reached the centre of the bridge, the young man in uniform standing there watched us with a wistful air. His attention was turned from us in a moment, as a young woman – no more than nineteen at most – ran towards him, holding her hat on her head with one hand. She was, I saw, dressed in the green, white and purple of the suffragette movement, whose banners we had seen draped in corners out of easy reach of the police, demanding equal rights and votes for women.

The world was changing. Even in far away Pont-ar-Eden we had felt it, but here in London it was unmistakeable. The first years of this new century had heralded in a new world. And some of it, I could see in the faces of the men and women passing by, had brought unease. Even dread.

He felt me shiver. ‘Shall we go,
cariad
?’

‘In a moment,’ I replied. In a moment; when I had laid my ghosts to rest.

I looked down into the Thames, flowing beneath. How different I was now from the woman who had stood here, all those years ago, life hanging in the balance between the oblivion of the river, and the Meredith hospital, just a few streets away. Then, I had nothing. Now, my life was rich beyond measure.

I was glad that Judith had not accompanied us this time. Heaven knew where that private detective Lily had warned us of might be lurking, with his questions and his photograph, his holding out of a substantial reward and promise that Miss Treverick would find out something to her advantage, should she appear.

It was old Mrs Meredith who had brought me the copy of The Times containing news of William’s death. She was a woman with sharp eyes, for all they were mostly focussed on her books and the current article she was writing. At first, she had been wary of me. Until, at last, we told her the truth.

‘Oh, my dear,’ she had said, softly, putting her arms around me, with tears in her eyes. That was all she said. That was all that was needed. From that day we were drawn together tightly by our grief for our lost children, and regret for the things that neither of us had said or done to keep them safe.

After that day, she had shared with me the stories that were her study, and her attempts to restore the wilderness of her garden. And maybe also she understood the restlessness that came over me when my work with the children’s hospital was done. I had, of course, been proud of the attention given to the Meredith Social Study of Lambeth and the praise heaped on the photographs and the drawings alongside the carefully gathered facts. But it had made me uneasy whenever I held a pencil in my hand, afraid that my drawings might attract a more unwelcome attention, the kind that might destroy my secret – and Judith’s – in an instant.

Besides, in this new happiness of mine, all my senses seemed to have been given life, urging me towards more. Towards touch, and feel. It was Mrs Meredith who had given me the courage to approach the younger son of the village blacksmith, who had turned his hand to stone masonry. I think young Mr Humphries thought me slightly touched in the head. But somewhere between his little English, and my little Welsh, we came to an understanding, as he taught me the rudiments of his trade. He scratched his head at my explanation that I wished to make the small creatures that were part of the new garden design. But fortunately being a foreigner, and from the big house, seemed sufficient to explain this eccentricity of mine.

As we worked together on the gardens, Mrs Meredith could not help but notice young Mr Evans and his ideas. Anymore than either of us could miss his head deep in conversation with Judith at every available moment. So when the news came, she gave me that chance to tell Judith, in the quiet of her rooms above her shop on Pont-ar-Eden High Street, before she might come across it by chance.

Poor Judith had wept for her brother and for many days afterwards she was quiet, keeping herself busy in her little shop and avoiding Plas Eden. But a decision could not be put off forever.

‘It would give you riches,’ I said, the day she returned at last to see the progress of the gardens.

‘Yes,’ she replied. Her voice was far away.

I was determined to be the voice of reason. ‘And independence. It would give you the power to make a garden of your own like this, entirely to your own design.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It was kind of William to think of me.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ I replied. Now was not the time to comment on the power of a guilty conscience, or the wish to keep one’s riches within the family.

I saw the direction in which her gaze travelled.

‘You could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams,’ I said, quietly.

‘He would never accept,’ she replied. She met my eyes. ‘Lewis Evans is a proud man. I would lose him.’

‘You could give him the choice,’ I suggested. ‘He might surprise you.’

‘They would laugh at him. For his manners and the way he speaks.’ That old stubborn line had overtaken her lips. ‘And they would laugh at me.’ Her eyes rested once more on the bowl of the new fountain, where Mr Evans was struggling with the figure of Venus, who appeared to be unwilling to allow water anywhere near her. ‘The Trevericks would try to make me the lady I never was. They’d tell me how to look and how to dress. They’d be shocked at my walk. And even more so at my opinions. And the fact that I have opinions at all. Lewis would think me far removed from him, and every man who wished to marry me would be one I would not trust.’ She smiled. ‘If I were very poor, and had no way of making a living, then being mistress of Treverick Hall would be a freedom. As it is, my freedom, and my happiness, are here.’ She took my hand. ‘Of course I was tempted, for a little while, at least. But it seems to me that being the heiress of Treverick Hall would bring me nothing but misery.’

Over by the fountain, Venus had given up all resistance. A flute of water shot up, high into the air, sending the workers scrabbling from the bowl, already drenched.

‘It worked!’ called Judith. She was already running to join them. ‘I told you it would work.’

‘Typical woman,’ I heard Mr Evans say, as he eyed the Venus, his clothes dripping.

‘Mind of her own, you mean,’ said Judith, tartly. And I saw how the love shone in his eyes, as he smiled in his reply.

 

On Westminster Bridge, a barge emerged from beneath us, bustling on its way with a loud warning hoot towards smaller vessels straying towards its path, and bringing me back to the warmth at my side and the roses in my hand.

‘Happy?’ asked my new – in law if nothing else – husband.

‘Completely,’ I replied. ‘I wish things could stay as they are now, forever.’

‘Mmm,’ he grunted. He was watching the throng of people passing us, as if lost in thought. ‘Maybe we should ask Evans to arrange for the bottom field next to the kitchen garden to be ploughed up, when we get back to Plas Eden. If there is to be a war, I suspect food could soon be in short supply, and if we wait until the event, there will be few young men left in the village to undertake the task. We could then at least supply some fresh fruit and vegetables to the village and to the hospital here.’

I put my arm through his, and held him tight. Once, I had thought it was the rich and the titled, the beautiful and the extravagant who would inherit the earth. How differently I felt now. And that idea I had been talking over with David’s mother and with Judith, as the gardens at Plas Eden were brought back to life, came back into my mind. This time with utter certainty.

The little people, my Uncle Jolyon used to call them. As would William, too, had he spared the energy to think of all those who worked, day and night, putting the food on his table and keeping his house clean and warm. The brick-makers who made each brick to build Treverick Hall. The cotton spinner in the factories and the weaver who made the cloth. The seamstress who sewed the garments that covered us. All the men and women who would keep the world turning, whatever the outside world might decree, and whatever sorrow might be inflicted upon them. The children, who would take our world, and make it grow into the future.

All of us, I thought, as I looked down into the waters of the Thames, where my life might have ended so long ago, have our stories to tell. Lives to be celebrated. The self-styled great and the good make a hideous amount of noise concerning their existence. But we who have survived whatever life has thrown at us, who have learnt the hard lesson of what it is to be human, are the ones whose stories should be told in stone. Ours are the stories that should be remembered forever.

A fire began inside me that day. A flame that would carry me in ambition beyond a small dragon or even the most graceful of garden nymphs. That would also carry me through whatever might lie ahead for us. One I knew would never die.

‘Ready?’ I said, lifting my eyes from the river to those of the man I loved, and would love, until the end of time.

He smiled, his eyes warm on mine. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Time, I think, for us to go home.’

 St Catherine’s was a simple, whitewashed church, flooded with light from Victorian stained-glass windows featuring scenes of Mary Magdalene, small children and the poor.

‘Mr Jackson phoned to say you were coming,’ said the vicar, making her way down the aisle to greet them as they entered. Maggie Day was a tall young woman with sleek cropped hair and the confident stride of a marathon runner. ‘The Merediths built this church, you know.’

‘Really?’ said David.

‘Oh, yes. They were always very particular that everyone was welcome, including the ‘fallen’ women they worked with.’ She smiled. ‘And that compassion was preached, rather than
hell-fire
. We’re proud to keep up that tradition today. Mr Jackson said you were interested in the social history of the hospital?’

‘Yes,’ David replied.

The vicar gave him a sharp glance. ‘Anything special you might like to find out about?’

‘Well,’ he began, before stumbling to a halt.