The Forgotten Garden (20 page)

‘Nobody did,’ said Ruby gleefully. ‘Nobody except the owner, and I can assure you she hadn’t given them much thought in a very long time.’

‘How did you get them?’

‘Purely by chance, darling. Purely by chance. When I first conceived the idea for the exhibition, I didn’t just want to rearrange the same old Victoriana that people have been shuffling past for decades. So I ran a little classified advert in all the specialist mags I could think of. Very simple, it just read Wanted on loan: artistic objects of interest from the turn of the nineteenth century. To be displayed with loving care in London museum exhibition.

‘Lo and behold, I started receiving phone calls the day the first advert appeared. Most of them were false alarms of course, Great Aunt Mavis’s paintings of the sky and the like, but there were pieces of gold amongst the rubble. You’d be surprised the number of priceless items that have survived despite the slightest care.’

It was the same with antiques, Cassandra thought: the best finds were always those that had been forgotten for decades, escaped the clutches of enthusiastic DIY-ers.

Ruby looked again at the sketches. ‘These were among my most prized discoveries.’ She smiled at Cassandra. ‘Unfinished sketches by Nathaniel Walker, who’d have thought? I mean, we’ve got a small collection of his portraits upstairs, and there’s some at Tate Britain, but as far as I knew, as far as anyone knew, that was all that had survived.

The rest were thought to have—’

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‘Been destroyed. Yes, I know.’ Cassandra’s cheeks were warm.

‘Nathaniel Walker was notorious for disposing of preparatory sketches, work he wasn’t happy with.’

‘You can imagine then how I felt when the woman handed me these. I’d driven all the way out to Cornwall the day before and had been traipsing from one house to another politely declining various items that were entirely unsuitable. Honestly—’ she rolled her eyes skyward—‘the things people thought might fit the bill would amaze you. Suffice to say, when I arrived at the house I was just about ready to call it quits. It was one of those white seaside cottages with the grey slate roofs, and I was on the verge of giving up when Clara opened the door. She was a funny little thing, like a character out of Beatrix Potter, an ancient hen dressed in a hausfrau’s apron. She ushered me into the tiniest, most cluttered sitting room I’d ever seen—made my place look like a mansion—and she insisted on making me a cuppa. I’d have preferred a whiskey at that point, the day I’d had, but I sank down into the cushions and waited to see what utterly worthless object she was going to waste my time with.’

‘And she gave you these.’

‘I knew what they were immediately. They’re not signed, but they’ve got his embossing stamp on them. See in the upper left-hand corner.

I swear, I started to shake when I saw that. Nearly knocked my cup of tea all over them.’

‘But how did she get them?’ Cassandra asked. ‘Where did she get them?’

‘She said they were amongst her mother’s things,’ said Ruby. ‘Her mother, Mary, moved in with Clara after she was widowed, and lived there until she died in the mid sixties. They were both widows and I gather they were good company for one another. Certainly Clara was delighted to have a captive audience to regale with stories about mother dearest. Before I left she insisted on showing me up the most perilous flight of stairs to take a look at Mary’s room.’ Ruby leaned closer to Cassandra. ‘What a surprise that was. Mary might have been dead for forty years, but that room looked as if she was about to arrive home at any moment. It was creepy, but in the most delicious way: a slim little single bed, still made up perfectly, a newspaper folded on the bedside table with a half-completed crossword on the upper sheet. And over 136

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beneath the window was a little locked chest—tantalising!’ She finger-combed her wild grey hair. ‘I tell you, it took every bit of restraint I could muster to resist tearing across the room and ripping the lock open with my bare hands.’

‘Did she open it? Did you see what was inside?’

‘No such luck. I remained mercifully restrained and was ushered out a few moments later. I had to content myself with the Nathaniel Walker sketches and Clara’s assurances that there’d been no more like them amongst her mother’s things.’

‘Was Mary an artist too?’ said Cassandra.

‘Mary? No, she was a domestic. At least she was to begin with.

During the first war she’d worked in a munitions factory and I think she must’ve left service after that. Well, she left service in a manner of speaking. She married a butcher and spent the rest of her days making black puddings and keeping the chopping boards clean. Not sure which I’d have liked least!’

‘Either way,’ Cassandra said, frowning, ‘how on earth did she get her hands on these? Nathaniel Walker was famously secretive about his artwork, and the sketches are so rare. He didn’t give them to anyone, never signed contracts with publishers who wanted to retain copyright of the originals, and that was the finished artwork. I can’t imagine what would have made him part with unfinished sketches like these.’

Ruby shrugged. ‘Borrowed them? Bought them? Maybe she stole them. I don’t know, and I must admit I don’t much mind. I’m happy to chalk it up to one of life’s beautiful mysteries. I just thank god she did get her hands on them, and that she never realised their value, didn’t find them worthy of display, and was thus able to preserve them so beautifully for us through the entire twentieth century.’

Cassandra leaned closer to the pictures. Though she’d never seen them before she recognised them. They were unmistakeable: early drafts of the illustrations in the fairytale book. Drawn more quickly, the lines scratched eagerly in an exploratory fashion, filled with the artist’s early enthusiasm for the subject. Cassandra’s breaths shortened as she remembered feeling that sensation herself when she began a drawing. ‘It’s incredible, having the chance to see a work in progress.

It says so much more about the artist, I sometimes think, than the finished work ever could.’

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‘Like the Michelangelo sculptures in Florence.’

Cassandra looked sideways at her, pleased by Ruby’s perspicacity.

‘I got goosebumps the first time I saw a picture of that knee emerging from the marble. As if the figure had been trapped inside all along, just waiting for someone with enough skill to come and release him.’

Ruby beamed. ‘Hey,’ she said, alight with a sudden idea, ‘it’s your only night in London, let’s go out to eat. I’m supposed to catch up with my friend, Grey, but he’ll understand. Or I’ll bring him, too, more the merrier, after all—’

‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ came an American accent, ‘do you work here?’

A tall black-haired man had come to stand between them.

‘I do,’ said Ruby, ‘how may I help?’

‘My wife and I are mighty hungry and one of the guys upstairs said there was a coffee shop down here?’

Ruby rolled her eyes at Cassandra. ‘There’s a new Carluccio’s near the station. Seven o’clock, my shout.’ Then she pressed her lips together and forced a thin smile. ‘Right this way, sir. I’ll show you where it is.’

c

When she left the V&A, Cassandra went in search of a delayed lunch.

She figured the last meal she’d eaten must have been the aeroplane supper, a handful of Ruby’s liquorice allsorts and a cup of tea: little wonder her stomach was shouting at her. Nell’s notebook had a pocket map of central London glued inside the front cover, and as far as Cassandra could tell, no matter which direction she took she was bound to find something to eat and drink. As she peered at the map she noticed a faint biro cross, somewhere on the other side of the river, a street in Battersea. Excitement brushed like feathers on her skin.

X marked the spot, but which spot exactly?

Twenty minutes later, she bought a tuna sandwich and a bottle of water at a café on the Kings Road, then continued down Flood Street towards the river. On the other side, the four smokestacks of Battersea power station stood tall and bold. Cassandra felt an odd thrill as she traced Nell’s footsteps.

The autumnal sun had come out from hiding and was tossing silver flecks along the surface of the river. The Thames. What a lot the river 138

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had seen: innumerable lives spent along its banks, countless deaths.

And it was from this river that a boat had left, all those years ago, with little Nell on board. Taking her away from the life she’d known, towards an uncertain future. A future that was now past, a life that was over.

And yet it still mattered, it had mattered to Nell and it mattered now to Cassandra. This puzzle was her inheritance. More than that, it was her responsibility.

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18

London, 1975

London, England, 1975

Nell tilted her head to get a better view. She had hoped that by seeing the house in which Eliza had lived she might somehow recognise it, feel instinctively that it was important to her past, but she did not. The house at number thirty-five Battersea Church Road was utterly unfamiliar. It was plain, and for the most part looked like every other house on the street: three storeys, sash windows, thin drainpipes snaking up rough brick walls that time and grime were turning black.

The only thing that set it apart was an odd addition at the top of the house. From the outside it appeared that part of the roof had been bricked in to create an extra room, though without seeing it from inside it was difficult to know.

The road itself ran parallel to the Thames. This dirty street with rubbish in its gutters and snotty children playing on its pavement certainly didn’t seem the type of place to spawn a writer of fairytales.

Silly, romantic notions, of course, but when Nell had imagined Eliza her thoughts had been fleshed out with images of JM Barrie’s Kensington Gardens, the magical charm of Lewis Carroll’s Oxford.

But this was the address listed in the book she’d bought from Mr Snelgrove. This was the house where Eliza Makepeace had been born.

Where she’d spent her early years.

Nell went closer. There didn’t seem to be any activity inside the house so she dared to lean right up against the front window. A tiny room, a brick fireplace, and a poky kitchen. A narrow flight of stairs that clung to the wall by the door.

Nell stepped back, almost tripping over a dead pot plant.

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A face at the window next door made her jump, a pale face framed by a corona of frizzled white hair. Nell blinked, and when she looked back the face was gone. A ghost? She blinked again. She did not believe in ghosts, not the sort that went bump in the night.

Sure enough, the door to number thirty-seven Battersea Church Road swung open with mighty force. Standing on the other side was a miniature woman, about four foot tall with pipe-cleaner legs and a walking stick. From a raised mound on the left of her chin came one long silver hair. ‘Who’re you, girlie?’ she said in a muddy cockney voice.

It had been forty years at least since anyone had called her girlie.

‘Nell Andrews,’ she said, stepping back from the wizened plant. ‘I’m just visiting. Just looking. Just trying to—’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m Australian.’

‘Australian?’ said the woman, pale lips drawing back at the sides in a gummy smile. ‘Why didn’t you say so? My niece’s husband is Australian. They live in Sydney, you might know of ’em? Desmond and Nancy Parker?’

‘Afraid not,’ said Nell. The old woman’s countenance began to sour.

‘I don’t live in Sydney.’

‘Ah well,’ said the woman somewhat sceptically. ‘P’haps if you ever get there you’ll run into them.’

‘Desmond and Nancy. I’ll be sure to remember.’

‘He don’t get in till late most times.’

Nell frowned. The niece’s husband in Sydney?

‘Fellow what lives next door. Quiet for the most part.’ The woman dropped her voice to a stage whisper. ‘Might be a darkie, but he works hard.’ She shook her head. ‘Fancy that! An African man living here at number thirty-five. Did I ever think I’d see the day? My ma’d roll in her grave if she knew there was blacks living in the old house.’

Nell’s interest was piqued. ‘Your mother lived here too?’

‘That she did,’ said the old woman proudly. ‘I was born here, that very house what you’re so interested in, matter of fact.’

‘Born here?’ Nell raised her eyebrows. There weren’t many people who could say they’d lived their entire life in the one street. ‘What’s that, sixty, seventy years ago?’

‘Nearly seventy-eight, I’ll have you know.’ The woman jutted her chin so that the silver hair caught the light. ‘Not a day less.’

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‘Seventy-eight years,’ said Nell slowly. ‘And you’ve been here all that time. Since . . .’ a quick calculation, ‘since 1897?’

‘I ’ave, December 1897. Christmas baby, I was.’

‘Do you have many memories? From childhood, I mean?’

She cackled. ‘Sometimes I think they’re the only memories I got.’

‘It must have been a different place back then.’

‘Oh yes,’ said the old woman sagely, ‘and that’s a fact.’

‘The woman I’m interested in lived on this street too. Here at this house apparently. Perhaps you remember her?’ Nell unzipped her bag and withdrew the picture she’d had photostated from the frontispiece of the fairytale book. Noticed that her fingers were trembling slightly.

‘She’s drawn to look like a fairytale illustration, but if you look closely at her face . . .’

The old woman extended a gnarled hand and took the proffered image, squinted so that rows of wrinkles gathered around each eye.