Eden's Garden (9 page)

Diamonds I could have walked away from. The latest fashions from Paris and the finest shoes money could buy would not have tempted me in the slightest. But now I had the passion in me again, paper and pencils I would die for.

‘Think it over,’ he said. Like a fisherman who feels the line already taut and ready to reel in.

‘Yes. Thank you.’

He meant so well. I could see he meant well. It was the way his mind worked, ceaselessly, in the running of the Meredith Hospital. Another woman they could keep from the streets. And another skill they could use.

I wondered, as I made my way back to my scrubbing brush, if all that working out of his had warned him the danger he was in?

He was a kind man. A gentle, kind man. Not much older than myself, which, for a man, is still young. Still not yet in the prime of life. He was a man who deserved the happy fireside of wife and children, so beloved of the novels of Mr Dickens.

If I had been a noble, self-sacrificing Agnes or Little Dorrit, I would have slipped out of my bed at dawn, and vanished forever into the ether to keep him safe.

Which, of course, I didn’t.

 When summer finally arrived, it came all in a rush, as if it couldn’t apologise enough for the despair of ice cream sellers along the coast and the shops full of untouched sundresses.

A clear, blazing heat settled over sea and mountain alike. Within days – or so it seemed – the sheep-fields around Plas Eden turned a rich green. In the narrow lanes between Talarn and Pont-ar-Eden, honeysuckle and dog roses climbed high into the hedgerows, sending their delicate fragrance through the open windows of passing cars.

Carys pulled into one of the parking bays in Pont-ar-Eden Square and watched the rays of sun streaming through the village, her mood lifting slightly. It was that clear,
early-summer
light she remembered so well from her childhood: the kind that always roused the faded blues and yellows of the terraced houses into soft glow, and the dark grey slates of the roofs into a newly-washed smartness.

But there was no time for lingering, not with a car-full of shopping and a million things to be done before Mam’s return to Willow Cottage this afternoon. Carys sighed and pulled herself a little stiffly out of the car. She’d intended to have several days in her mother’s house before Mam was released from the nursing home. Time to get things in order. Time to adjust. But, somehow, the arrangements in Chester had taken far longer than she’d imagined.

And then there was Joe. Carys grabbed her handbag and zapped the car shut. Joe was making no bones at being unhappy at her choice. The atmosphere in the flat over the past weeks had been unmistakeably that of hurt and resentment. His hurt, her resentment. She wasn’t proud of the fact.

It was a subject she had been mulling over all the way from Chester, without coming to any useful conclusions. Carys pushed the thoughts from her mind. That was for another day. For now she had quite enough to be getting on with, what with Mam, in her current emotionally fragile state, to deal with in a few hours and Joe, in his emotionally hurtful state of this morning, to be placated into some kind of peace this evening. If that were possible.

‘Good morning,’ she said with an appearance of cheerfulness, as she walked into Jones the Grocers.

‘Ah, good morning, Carys,’ replied Sara Jones, white-haired and round faced, seventy if she was a day, briskly stacking loaves and scones on the wooden shelves behind the counter. A delicious smell of baking filled the air, sending Carys’ stomach into a sudden rumble of hunger. ‘Today’s the day, then,’ remarked Sara, as Carys chose Mam’s favourite crisp white loaf, still warm from the oven.

‘Yes it is,’ said Carys. ‘And may I have a
bara brith
and a chocolate cake as well, please.’

‘Certainly,’ replied Sara. ‘I know your mam has been looking forward to this day,’ she added, as she wrapped the bread and the little rectangular fruitcake in tissue, placing the slightly uneven cake, sleek with icing, into a white cardboard box. ‘She’ll be glad to get home, I’m sure.’

‘Yes, she will,’ smiled Carys. With a final choice of a double choc chip muffin (for medicinal purposes only), she put her purchases in her bag and made her way back out into the street.

Despite the sun, there was no mistaking that Pont-ar-Eden high street was clinging onto its existence by a whisper. In between the few defiantly open small shops and the larger Low-Price convenience store lay rows of boarded up and abandoned premises, with several already transformed back into houses or flats.

As long as Carys could remember, there had been something of the spirit of the blitz about the beleaguered
Stryd Fawr
. Mam’s
Talarn Herald
was always full of articles on how the big supermarkets were strangling village high streets out of existence, invariably accompanied by the same photograph of Pont-ar-Eden looking particularly rain-swept and bleakly empty. Even the bantering comments of the remaining shopkeepers flying across the street from their doorsteps on sunny days, seemed almost a checking between them of who had survived to battle for customers another day, and who had succumbed to the last rise in council tax and the hike in the electricity bills.

There was, Carys remembered with sudden vividness, more than one reason for that flight of hers from Pont-ar-Eden all those years ago. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Mam, she’d have been out of there this minute, bearing Sara Jones’ infamous (if you were watching your waistline, that is) chocolate cake home to Joe as a peace offering.

But there
was
Mam. So she made her way into Prydderch’s Newsagents instead, in search of Mam’s favourite story magazine and usual TV guide, both of which – despite her list – she’d managed to miss in her mad dash around Sainsburys that morning.

Prydderch’s was just as she remembered it. The same cadaverous gloom, crammed full of dog-eared birthday cards and dust-laden boxes of Monopoly and Scrabble. She could have sworn that nothing – not even the faded boxes of
after-dinner
mints – had moved since she and Gwenan and Nia had piled in there after school for their weekly fix of Love Hearts and Strawberry Bootlaces. Even the smell of newsprint tinged with Parma Violets was unchanged.

Evan Prydderch himself eyed her closely, with the
world-weary
air of a man who just
knows
half his stock of Pear Drops and a tube of Smarties will have vanished into thin air by the time she left the shop.

‘Good morning,’ said Carys, brightly. ‘Lovely day, isn’t it.’

Evan grunted in disapproval at such unnecessary cheeriness. As a child, Carys had been terrified of him, as had even the toughest of self-styled toughs in Pont-ar-Eden Primary, although they would never admit it. She wasn’t quite sure she felt at ease in his presence, even now.

Evan Prydderch was tall and stick-thin, bent over at the shoulders as if permanently lifting heavy stacks of newspapers. Like his shop, he scarcely seemed to have aged, having appeared ancient in the first place. Gloom hung about him in the cloud of stale tobacco clinging to his patched tweed jacket and the black, newsprint grubbiness of his fingers. In the early hours of each morning, come rain or shine, for as long as Carys could remember, Evan Prydderch had stalked the village; shopping-trolley of newspapers rattling along behind him, tails of his black trench coat flying, like some retired Nosferatu taking a sniff at the night air for old times’ sake.

‘Thank you,’ said Carys, smiling determinedly against the odds, as she paid for her magazines and placed them into her bag.

‘For your mam, are they?’ demanded Evan.

‘Yes,’ said Carys, surprised that he had recognised her after all. ‘Yes they are. She’s coming home today.’

‘Good for you,’ he muttered. ‘Never let you go, do those places, once they’ve got their hands into you.’ He reached, slightly furtively, under the counter, emerging with a paper bag of sweets. ‘Coconut Teacakes,’ he stated. ‘Mair’s favourite.’

‘I’m sure she’ll really enjoy them,’ said Carys, as he impatiently brushed away her attempt at thanks, determining never to yield to temptation and buy her newspapers and treats at Low-Price again.

Those were the last things she needed. All done. Time to get to Willow Cottage. Carys paused as she shut the door of the newsagents behind her, fishing for her car keys. As she did so, the little bell in Jones the Grocers rang out, making her look up instinctively. The dark-haired mongrel now tied to the drainpipe next to the shop door burst out into high-pitched hysterics as David Meredith emerged, loaf and a large carton of milk in hand. Carys stepped quickly back into the shadows behind the carousel of musty postcards outside Evan’s shop.

The pain was still there; the deep, twisting pain that always rose in her belly, no matter how many times they had nodded to each other over the years, briefly and wordlessly from opposite sides of Pont-ar-Eden High Street.

He was thinner than she remembered. It made him seem even longer and lankier than ever. His face appeared almost gaunt, with a deep line across his forehead she had not seen before.

‘Okay, okay Hodge,’ he was saying, bending down to release the lead. He placed the loaf and the milk in a backpack, slinging it onto one shoulder with a practiced air. ‘Heel,’ he commanded, as the mongrel took off at a hundred miles an hour towards the nearest lamppost. More sedately this time, the two set off away from her, in the direction of Plas Eden, David limping heavily, with all the determination of a man who had been told to use at least one stick at all times, and wasn’t about to, not if it killed him.

Well, they always had been a match for each other when it came to stubbornness, if nothing else, thought Carys, with just the faintest of wry smiles, as she made her way slowly back towards the car.

 

It was the smell of freshly-ground coffee that did for her. As Carys wedged the cake securely for its short ride, the tantalising scent came drifting down the street with a
mouth-watering
edge of bacon and buttered toast.

In front of her, the Boadicea Café stood newly painted and cheerful, with its striped awning and outside tables topped by the bright splash of hanging baskets still dripping from an early morning watering. Just a quick coffee wouldn’t hurt, she decided. She’d still have time to get the most necessary of preparation done before Mam arrived. And besides, wasn’t this a chance to check out whether this was somewhere she could bring Mam when she was feeling a little better?

Pont-ar-Eden didn’t do busy. It didn’t even particularly do thriving. A farmer and a couple of pensioners, that was all there would be. A few curious glances, a few questions about Mam, and she would be left in peace.

‘Sod,’ muttered Carys under her breath, as the jangling of the Boadicea’s doorbell sent an entire sea of faces turning towards her.

The Boadicea comprised of a single long room filled with round wooden tables, and lit by light streaming in from large windows to the side and a huge curve of a bay window at the far end. Every table, so it seemed, was fully occupied. Nearest the door, mothers with pushchairs gossiped over skinny lattes and custard slices. Old men, bent and shrunken, chatted over mugs of tea, or flicked through the newspapers.

The prime position of the bay window, with its comfort of a slightly faded sofa and chairs, had been commandeered by the white hair and wheeled shopping trolleys of Pont-ar-Eden’s more fearsome matriarchs – the ones with sharp elbows when it came to the monthly car boot in the church grounds, and a line in haggling that would put a Souk trader from Marrakesh to shame.

Away from the windows, along one side of the café, a further group, of both sexes this time, were gathered around a line of computer screens, deep in animated conversation.

‘There’s room here, if you care to join me.’

‘Are you sure?’ said Carys, eying the man in the leather jacket, sporting a ponytail just starting to grey at the edges. She had no intention of spending her last precious free time as a sounding board for some born-again-biker guy’s general opinion on life, the universe and everything. On the other hand, this sudden male interest had the Pont-ar-Eden matriarchs returning to their toast. Undoubtedly still watching every move, but at least not trying to get her attention.

Her rescuer, catching the quick slide of her eyes towards the window, grinned. ‘I’d quit while you’re ahead,’ he said, just quietly enough to be covered by the conversation around them.

A fellow traveller amongst the gossips of Pont-ar-Eden, then. Carys smiled, grabbed the free chair folded up against the wall for emergencies, and pulled it across to the little table. ‘Okay. Thanks.’

‘It’s their history day,’ remarked her new companion, as the waitress finished taking their orders. ‘Professor Humphries will be along in a bit to give them a hand. They all get terribly excited about it. They’ll soon forget all about you.’

‘I didn’t know the Historical Society met here,’ said Carys, torn between not entering into conversation and not appearing rude.

‘Not just the Historical Society,’ he replied. ‘It seems everyone is getting in on the act, since the computers arrived. I’d never have thought the village was so proud of its past. I suppose it’s like everything: you never really appreciate what you have until you think you might lose it.’