The Forgotten Garden (28 page)

‘Who’s that?’ she said.

Davies turned and squinted up towards the house. Nodded slightly in the direction of the upper window. ‘I reckon that’s Miss Rose.’

‘Miss Rose?’

‘Your cousin. Your aunt and uncle’s girl.’

Eliza’s eyes widened. Her cousin?

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‘We used to see quite a lot of her about the estate, bright young thing she was, but some years ago she took ill and that was the end of that. The mistress spends all her time and a fair bit of money trying to fix whatever’s wrong, and the young doctor from town’s always coming and going.’

Eliza was still staring up at the window. Slowly she raised her hand, fingers wide like the starfish from the beach. She waved back and forth, watched as the face disappeared quickly into the dark.

A slight smile pulled at Eliza’s face. ‘Rose,’ she said, tasting the sweetness of the word. It was just like the name of a princess in a fairytale.

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24

Cliff Cottage, 2005

Cliff Cottage, Cornwall, 2005

The wind whipped through Cassandra’s hair, twirling her ponytail inside out, outside in, like streamers on a windsock. She pulled her cardigan tight around her shoulders and paused a moment to catch her breath, looked back down the narrow coastal road to the village below. Tiny white cottages clung like barnacles to the rocky cove, and red and blue fishing boats dotted the denim harbour, bobbing on the swell as gulls swooped and spiralled above their hauls. The air, even at this height, was laden with salt licked from the sea’s surface.

The road was so narrow and so close to the cliff ’s edge that Cassandra wondered how anyone ever worked up the courage to drive along it. Tall, pale sea grasses grew each side, shivering as the wind rushed through. The higher she went, the more mizzle seemed to hang in the air.

Cassandra glanced at her watch. She’d underestimated how long it would take to reach the top, not to mention the weariness that would turn her legs to jelly midway up. Jetlag and good old-fashioned lack of sleep.

She’d slept terribly the night before. The room, the bed, were both comfortable enough, but she’d been plagued with strange dreams, the sort that lingered upon waking but slithered away from memory as she tried to grasp them. Only the tendrils of discomfort remained.

At some point during the night she’d been woken by a more material cause. A noise, like the sound of a key in her bedroom door. She’d been sure that’s what it was, the insertion and jiggling as the person on the other side tried to make it turn, but when she’d mentioned it at the front desk this morning, the girl had looked at her strangely 196

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before saying, in a rather chilly voice, that the hotel used key cards, not metal keys. What she’d heard was only the wind toying with the old brass fitting.

Cassandra started up the hill again. It couldn’t be much further, the woman in the village grocery shop had said it was only a twenty minute walk and she’d been climbing now for thirty.

She rounded a corner and saw a red car pulled over by the side of the road. A man and woman stood watching her: he was tall and thin while she was short and stout. For a moment Cassandra thought they might be sightseers enjoying the view, but when each lifted a hand in unison and waved, she knew who they must be.

‘Hello there!’ called the man, coming towards her. He was middle-aged, though his hair and beard, white as icing sugar, gave the initial impression of a much older face. ‘You must be Cassandra. I’m Henry Jameson and this—’ he indicated the beaming woman—‘is my wife, Robyn.’

‘Lovely to meet you,’ said Robyn, hot on her husband’s heels. Her greying hair was cut in a neat bob that grazed cheeks pink and polished and plump as apples.

Cassandra smiled. ‘Thanks for meeting me on a Saturday, I really appreciate it.’

‘Nonsense.’ Henry ran a hand across his head to tidy fine windblown hairs. ‘No trouble at all. I only hope you don’t mind Robyn coming along—’

‘Of course she doesn’t, why would she mind?’ said Robyn. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

Cassandra shook her head.

‘What did I tell you? She doesn’t mind a bit.’ Robyn clutched Cassandra’s wrist. ‘Not that he had any chance of stopping me. He’d have been risking the divorce courts if he’d so much as tried.’

‘My wife is the secretary of the local historical society,’ Henry said, a hint of apology threading through his voice.

‘I’ve published a number of little booklets on the area. Histories mainly, about local families, important landmarks, great houses. My most recent is about the smuggling trade. We’re actually in the middle of putting all of the articles onto a website—’

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‘It’s her sworn aim to take tea in every stately home in the county.’

‘But I’ve lived in this village all my life and I’ve never so much as set foot inside the old place.’ Robyn smiled so that her cheeks shone.

‘I don’t mind telling you, I’m about as curious as a cat.’

‘We would never have guessed, my love,’ said Henry wearily, indicating the hill. ‘We have to go on foot from here, the road goes no further.’

Robyn led the way, striding purposefully along the narrow path of windswept grass. As they climbed higher, Cassandra began to notice the birds. Masses of tiny brown swallows calling to one another as they scuttled from one spindly branch to another. She had the oddest sensation of being watched, as if the birds were jostling to keep an eye on the human interlopers. She shivered a little, then admonished herself for being childish, inventing mystery where only atmosphere existed.

‘It was my father who handled the sale to your grandmother,’ said Henry, shortening his long strides to walk just behind Cassandra. ‘Back in seventy-five. I’d just started with the firm as a junior conveyancer, but I remember the sale.’

‘Everyone remembers the sale,’ called Robyn. ‘It was the last part of the old estate to go. There were folk in the village who swore the cottage’d never be sold.’

Cassandra looked out to sea. ‘Why is that? The house must have beautiful views . . .’

Henry glanced at Robyn, who had stopped walking and was catching her breath, hand on the middle of her chest. ‘Well now, that’s true enough,’ he said, ‘but—’

‘There were bad stories about town,’ said Robyn, between pants.

‘Rumours and the like . . . about the past.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Silly rumours,’ said Henry firmly, ‘lots of nonsense, the sort you’d find in any English village.’

‘There was talk that it was haunted,’ Robyn continued, sotto voce.

Henry laughed. ‘Find me a house in Cornwall that isn’t.’

Robyn rolled her pale blue eyes. ‘My husband is a pragmatist.’

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‘And my wife is a romantic,’ said Henry. ‘Cliff Cottage is stone and mortar, just like all the other houses in Tregenna. It’s no more haunted than I am.’

‘And you call yourself a Cornishman.’ Robyn tucked a strand of wayward hair behind her ear and squinted up at Cassandra. ‘Do you believe in ghosts, Cassandra?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Cassandra thought of the strange feeling the birds had given her. ‘Not the sort that go bump in the night.’

‘Then you’re a sensible girl,’ said Henry. ‘The only thing that’s been in or out of Cliff Cottage in the past thirty years is the odd local lad out to give himself and his mates a fright.’ Henry took a monogrammed handkerchief from his trouser pocket, folded it in half and gave his forehead a pat. ‘Come now, Robyn dear. We’ll be all day if we don’t keep moving and that sun’s got a bite. A bit of leftover summer this week.’

The steep incline and narrowing track made further conversation difficult, and they walked the last hundred metres in silence. Wispy strands of pale grass shimmered as the wind sighed gently through.

Finally, after passing through a clump of straggly shrubs, they reached a stone wall. It was at least three metres high and seemed incongruous after they’d come so far without seeing a single man-made structure. An iron arch framed the entrance gate and wiry tendrils of creeper had plaited themselves through, been calcified by time. A sign that must once have been attached to the gate now dangled by a corner.

Pale green and brown lichen had grown scablike across its surface, filling greedily the curly lettered grooves. Cassandra inclined her head to read the words: Keep out or the risk be all yours.

‘The wall is a relatively new addition,’ said Robyn.

‘By new, my wife means it’s only a hundred years old. The cottage must be three times that.’ Henry cleared his throat. ‘Now you realise, don’t you, that the old place is in a state of some disrepair?’

‘I have a photograph.’ She pulled it from her handbag.

He raised his eyebrows as he looked it over. ‘Taken before the time of sale, I’d say. It’s changed a bit since then. It’s been untended, you see.’

He extended his left arm to push aside the iron gate and motioned with his head. ‘Shall we?’

A stone path led beneath an arbour of ancient roses with arthritic joints. The temperature cooled as they crossed the garden’s threshold.

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The overall impression was one of darkness and gloom. And quiet, an odd, still quiet. Even the noise of the irrepressible sea seemed dulled in here. It was as if the grounds within the stone wall were asleep.

Waiting for something, or someone, to wake them.

‘Cliff Cottage,’ said Henry, as they reached the path’s end.

Cassandra’s eyes widened. Before her was a huge tangle of brambles, thick and knotted. Ivy leaves, deep green and jagged, clung on all sides, stretching across the spaces where windows must be hidden. She would have been hard-pressed to make out the building that lay beneath the creepers had she not known it was there.

Henry coughed, apology again colouring his face. ‘For sure, it’s been left to its own devices.’

‘Nothing a good clean-up wouldn’t fix,’ said Robyn, with a forced cheerfulness that could have resurrected sunken ships. ‘No need for despondence. You’ve seen what they do on those renovation shows, haven’t you? You get them in Australia?’

Cassandra nodded absently, trying to make out the roofline.

‘I’ll let you do the honours,’ said Henry, reaching into his pocket to withdraw a key.

It was surprisingly heavy, long with a decorative end, a swirl of brass in a beautiful pattern. As she clasped it, Cassandra felt a flash of recognition. She’d held a key like this before. When, she wondered?

In the antiques stall? The image was so strong but the memory wouldn’t come.

Cassandra stepped onto the stone tread by the door. She could see the lock but a web of ivy had strung itself across the doorway.

‘These ought to do the trick,’ said Robyn, plucking a pair of secateurs from her handbag. ‘Don’t look at me like that, dear,’ she said as Henry raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m a country girl, we’re always prepared.’

Cassandra took the proffered tool and snipped the strands, one by one. When they all hung loose she paused a moment and ran her hand lightly over the salt-scarred wood of the door. A part of her was loath to proceed, content to linger a while on the threshold of knowledge, but when she glanced over her shoulder both Henry and Robyn nodded encouragement. She pushed the key into the lock and, using both hands, turned hard.

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The smell was the first thing to hit her, damp and fecund, and rich with animal droppings. Like the rainforests back home in Australia, whose canopies concealed a separate world of moist fertility. A closed ecosystem, wary of strangers.

She took a tiny step inside the hall. The front door admitted enough light to reveal mossy flecks floating lazily in the stale air, too light, too tired, to fall. The floors were made of wood and with each step her shoes made soft, apologetic sounds.

She came to the first room and peered around the door. It was dark, the windows coated by decades-old grime. As her eyes adjusted Cassandra saw it was a kitchen. A pale wooden table with tapered legs stood at centre, two cane chairs tucked obediently beneath. There was a black range set into an alcove on the far wall, cobwebs forming a furry curtain before it, and in the corner a spinning wheel was still threaded with a piece of dark wool.

‘It’s like a museum,’ whispered Robyn. ‘Only dustier.’

‘I don’t think I’ll be offering you a cup of tea any time soon,’ said Cassandra.

Henry had wandered over beyond the spinning wheel and was pointing to a stone nook. ‘There’s a set of stairs over here.’

A narrow flight ran up directly before turning abruptly at a small platform. Cassandra put her foot on the first step, testing its strength.

Sturdy enough. Cautiously, she began climbing.

‘Go carefully now,’ said Henry, following, hands hovering behind Cassandra’s back in a vague, kindly attempt at protection.

Cassandra reached the little platform and stopped.

‘What is it?’ said Henry.

‘A tree, a huge tree, completely blocking the way. It’s come right through the roof.’

Henry peered over her shoulder. ‘I don’t think Robyn’s secateurs are going to be much help,’ he said, ‘not this time. You need a tree-lopper.’ He started back down the stairs. ‘Any ideas, Robyn? Who would you call to clear a fallen log?’

Cassandra followed him and arrived at the bottom as Robyn said,

‘Bobby Blake’s lad ought to do the trick.’

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‘Local boy.’ Henry nodded at Cassandra. ‘Runs a landscaping business. Does most of the work up at the hotel, too, and you won’t get a better recommendation than that.’