The Forgotten Garden (10 page)

And here he was, considering breaking it apart—

A sound in the hall and he looked up. Lil, framed beneath the wooden fretwork, watching him. Some trick of the light drew red from her dark hair and planted a glow deep within her eyes, black moons beneath their long lashes. A thread of feeling tugged at the corner where her lips met, pulling her mouth into the sort of smile that described an emotion too powerful to be expressed verbally.

Hugh smiled back tentatively and his fingers slipped once more into his pocket, ran silently across the surface of the letter. His lips parted with a soft click, tingled with the words he didn’t want to speak but wasn’t sure he could stop.

Lil was by his side, then. Her fingers on his wrist sent hot shocks to his neck, her warm hand on his cheek. ‘Come to bed.’

Ah, were there ever words as sweet as those? Her voice contained a promise and—like that—his mind was made.

He slipped his hand into hers, held it firm and followed as she led.

As he passed the fireplace he tossed the paper on top. It sizzled as it caught, burned a brief reproach on his peripheral vision. But he didn’t stop, he just kept walking and never looked back.

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10

Brisbane, 2005

Brisbane, Australia, 2005

Long before it was an antique centre, it had been a theatre. The Plaza theatre, a grand experiment in the 1930s. Plain from the outside, a huge white box cut into the Paddington hillside, its interior was another story. The vaulted ceiling, midnight blue with cut-out clouds, had been back-lit originally to create the illusion of moonlight, while hundreds of tiny lights twinkled like stars. It had done a roaring trade for decades, back in the days when trams had rattled along the terrace and Chinese gardens had flourished in the valleys, but though it had prevailed against such fierce adversaries as fire and flood, it had fallen victim softly and swiftly to television in the sixties.

Nell and Cassandra’s stall was directly below the proscenium arch, stage left. A rabbit-warren of shelves obscured by countless pieces of bric-a-brac, odds and ends, old books and an eclectic assortment of memorabilia. Long ago the other dealers had started calling it Aladdin’s as a joke and the name had stuck. A small wooden sign with gold lettering now proclaimed the area Aladdin’s Den.

Sitting on a three-legged stool, deep within the maze of shelves, Cassandra was finding it difficult to concentrate. It was the first time she’d been inside the centre since Nell’s death and it felt strange to sit amongst the treasures they’d assembled together. Odd that the stock should still be here when Nell was gone. Disloyal of it, somehow.

Spoons that Nell had polished, price tickets with her indecipherable spider’s-web scrawl across them, books and more books. They’d been Nell’s weakness, every dealer had one. In particular, she loved books written at the end of the nineteenth century. Late Victorian with glorious printed texts and black and white illustrations. If a book bore 67

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a message from giver to recipient, so much the better. A record of its past, a hint as to the hands it had passed through in order to make its way to her.

‘Morning.’

Cassandra looked up to see Ben holding out a takeaway coffee.

‘Sorting stock?’ he said.

She brushed a few fine strands of hair from her eyes and took the proffered drink. ‘Moving things from here to there. Back again most times.’

Ben took a sip of his own coffee, eyed her over his cup. ‘I’ve got something for you.’ He reached beneath his knitted vest to withdraw a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket.

Cassandra opened the page and flattened out its creases. Printer paper, white A4, a patchy black and white picture of a house at the centre. A cottage really, stone from what she could make out, with blotches—creepers perhaps?—across the walls. The roof was tiled, a stone chimney visible behind the peak. Two pots balanced precariously at its top.

She knew what this house was, of course, didn’t need to ask.

‘Been having a bit of a dig,’ said Ben. ‘Couldn’t help myself. My daughter in London managed to make contact with someone in Cornwall and sent me this photo over the email.’

So this was what it looked like, Nell’s big secret. The house she’d bought on a whim and kept to herself all this time. Strange, the picture’s effect on her. Cassandra had left the deed on the kitchen table all weekend, had looked at it each time she walked past, thought of little else, but seeing this picture was the first time it had felt real. Everything came into sharp focus: Nell, who went to her grave not knowing who she really was, had bought a house in England and left it to Cassandra, had thought she’d understand why.

‘Ruby’s always had a knack for finding things out, so I set her to chasing up information about past owners. I thought if we knew who your grandma bought the house from, it might shed a little light on why.’ Ben pulled a small spiral notebook from his breast pocket and angled his glasses to best observe the page. ‘Do the names Richard and Julia Bennett mean anything to you?’

Cassandra shook her head, still looking at the picture.

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‘According to Ruby, Nell bought the property from Mr and Mrs Bennett, who themselves bought it in 1971. They bought the nearby manor house too; turned it into a hotel. The Blackhurst Hotel.’ He looked at Cassandra hopefully.

Again she shook her head.

‘You sure?’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘Ah,’ said Ben, shoulders seeming to deflate. ‘Ah well then.’ He flicked the notebook shut and leaned his arm on the nearest bookcase.

‘I’m afraid that’s the extent of my sleuthing. Long shot, I suppose.’ He scratched his beard. ‘Typical of Nell to leave a mystery like this. It’s the darnedest thing, isn’t it, a secret house in England?’

Cassandra smiled. ‘Thanks for the picture, and thank your daughter for me.’

‘You can thank her yourself when you’re over that side of the pond.’

He shook his takeaway cup then eyed the sipping hole to check that it was empty. ‘When do you think you’ll go?’

Cassandra’s eyes widened. ‘You mean to England?’

‘A picture’s all well and good, but it’s not the same as really seeing a place, is it?’

‘You think I should go to England?’

‘Why not? Twenty-first century, you could be there and back inside a week, and you’ll have a much better idea of what you want to do with the cottage.’

Despite the deed lying plain on her table, Cassandra had been so preoccupied with the theoretical fact of Nell’s cottage, she’d failed completely to consider it in practical terms: there was a cottage in England waiting for her. She scuffed at the dull timber floor then peered through her fringe at Ben. ‘I guess I should sell it?’

‘Big decision to make without setting foot inside.’ Ben tossed his cup into the overflowing rubbish bin by the cedar desk. ‘Wouldn’t hurt to take a look, eh? It obviously meant a lot to Nell, to have kept it all this time.’

Cassandra considered this. Fly to England, by herself, out of the blue. ‘But the stall . . .’

‘Pah! Centre staff ’ll take care of your sales, and I’ll be here.’ He indicated the laden shelves. ‘You’ve got enough stock to last through 69

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the next decade.’ His voice softened. ‘Why not go, Cass? It wouldn’t hurt to get away for a bit. Ruby’s living in a shoebox in South Kensington, working at the V&A. She’ll show you around, look after you.’

Look after her: people were always offering to look after Cassandra.

Once, a lifetime ago, she’d been a grown-up with her own responsibilities, had looked after others.

‘And what have you got to lose?’

Nothing, she had nothing to lose, no one to lose. Cassandra was suddenly weary of the topic. She hoisted a slight, yielding smile and added an ‘I’ll think about it’ for good measure.

‘There’s a girl.’ He patted her shoulder and made to leave. ‘Oh, almost forgot, I did turn up another interesting little titbit. Sheds no light on Nell and her house, but it’s a funny coincidence all the same, what with your art background, all those drawings you used to do.’

To hear years of one’s life, one’s passion, described so casually, relegated so absolutely to the past, was breathtaking. Cassandra managed to keep a weak smile afloat.

‘The estate that Nell’s house is on used to be owned by the Mountrachet family.’

The name meant nothing and Cassandra shook her head.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘The daughter, Rose, married a certain Nathaniel Walker.’

Cassandra frowned. ‘An artist . . . an American?’

‘That’s the one, portraits mostly, you know the sort of thing. Lady So-and-So and her six favourite poodles. According to my daughter, he even did one of King Edward in 1910, just before he died. Pinnacle of Walker’s career, I’d say, though Ruby seemed unimpressed. She said his portraits weren’t his best work, that they were a bit lifeless.’

‘It’s been a while since I . . .’

‘She preferred his sketches. That’s Ruby, though, always happiest when she’s swimming against the current of popular opinion.’

‘Sketches?’

‘Illustrations, magazine pictures, black and white.’

Cassandra inhaled sharply. ‘The Maze and Fox drawings.’

Ben lifted his shoulders and shook his head.

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‘Oh, Ben, they were incredible, are incredible, amazingly detailed.’

It had been so long since she’d thought about art history; it surprised her, this surge of ownership.

‘Nathaniel Walker came up briefly in a class I took on Aubrey Beardsley and his contemporaries,’ she said. ‘He was controversial, from what I remember, but I can’t recall why.’

‘That’s what Ruby said. You’re going to get on well with her. When I mentioned him she was very excited. She said they have a few of his illustrations in the new exhibition at the V&A; evidently they’re very rare.’

‘He didn’t do many,’ said Cassandra, remembering now. ‘I suppose he was too busy with the portraits, the illustrations were more of a hobby. All the same, those he did were very well regarded.’ She started.

‘I think we might have one here, in one of Nell’s books.’ She climbed onto an upturned milk crate and ran her index finger along the top shelf, stopped when she reached a burgundy spine with faded gold lettering.

She opened it, still standing on the crate, and flicked carefully through the colour plates in the front. ‘Here it is.’ Without taking her eyes from the page, she stepped down. ‘The Fox’s Lament.’

Ben came to stand by her, adjusted his glasses away from the light.

‘Intricate, isn’t it? Not my cup of tea, but that’s art for you. I can see what you admire about it.’

‘It’s beautiful, and somehow sad.’

He leaned closer. ‘Sad?’

‘Full of melancholy, yearning. I can’t explain better than that, something in the fox’s face, some sort of absence.’ She shook her head.

‘I can’t explain.’

Ben gave her arm a squeeze, murmured something about bringing her a sandwich at lunchtime, and then he was gone. Shuffling in the direction of his stall, more particularly the customer in his stall who was juggling the pieces of a Waterford chandelier.

Cassandra continued to study the picture, wondering how it was she felt so sure about the fox’s sorrow. That was the artist’s skill, of course, the ability through precise positioning of thin black lines to evoke so clearly such complex emotions . . .

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Her lips tightened. The sketch reminded her of the day she’d found the book of fairytales, when she’d been filling time beneath Nell’s house as upstairs her mother prepared to leave her. Looking back, Cassandra realised she could trace her love of art to that book. She’d opened the front cover and fallen inside the wonderful, frightening, magical illustrations. She’d wondered what it must feel like to escape the rigid boundaries of words and speak instead with such a fluid language.

And for a time, as she grew older, she had known: the alchemical pull of the pen, the blissful sensation of time losing meaning as she conjured at her drawing board. Her love of art had led her to study in Melbourne, had led her to marry Nicholas, and to everything else that had followed. Strange to think that life might have been completely different had she never seen the suitcase, had she not felt the curious compulsion to open it and look inside—

Cassandra gasped. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? Suddenly she knew exactly what she had to do, where she had to look. The one place where she might uncover the necessary clues to Nell’s mysterious origins.

c

That Nell might have rid herself of the suitcase occurred to Cassandra, but she pushed the notion aside with some certainty. For one thing, her grandmother was an antiques dealer, a collector, a bowerbird of the human species. It would have been completely out of character for her to destroy or discard something old and rare.

More importantly, if what the aunts had said was true, the suitcase wasn’t a mere historical artefact: it was an anchor. It was all Nell had that linked her to her past. Cassandra understood the importance of anchors, knew all too well what happened to a person when the rope that tied them to their life was cut. She had lost her own anchor twice.

The first time as a ten year old when Lesley had left her, the second as a young woman (was it really a decade ago?) when, in a split second, life as she knew it had changed and she’d been cast adrift once more.

Later, when she looked back upon events, Cassandra knew it was the suitcase that found her, just as it had done the first time.

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