The Forgotten Garden (29 page)

‘I’ll give him a call, shall I?’ said Robyn. ‘Find out how he’s placed later in the week? I’ll just take myself out to the point and see if I can pick up mobile reception. Mine’s been dead as a doorknob since we set foot in here.’

Henry shook his head. ‘Over a hundred years since Marconi received his signal, and now look where technology’s taken us. You know the signal was sent from just round the coast a little way?

Poldhu Cove?’

‘Was it?’ As the extent of the cottage’s dereliction dawned on her, Cassandra was beginning to feel increasingly overwhelmed. Grateful though she was to Henry for meeting her, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to feign interest in a lecture on early telecommunications. She brushed aside a woven shawl of spider’s web and leaned against the wall, offered him a stoic smile of polite encouragement.

Henry seemed to sense her mood. ‘I’m terribly sorry the cottage is in such a state,’ he said. ‘I can’t help but feel some responsibility, being the solicitor in charge of the key.’

‘I’m sure there was nothing you could have done. Particularly if Nell asked your father not to.’ She smiled. ‘Besides, it would’ve been trespassing and the sign out front is pretty clear about that.’

‘True enough, and your grandmother was adamant about us not calling in tradesmen. She said the house was very important to her and she wanted to see to the restoration personally.’

‘I think she had plans to move here,’ said Cassandra. ‘For good.’

‘Yes,’ said Henry. ‘I had a look back over the old files when I knew I’d be meeting you this morning. All her letters mention coming here herself until one written in early 1976. She said her circumstances had changed and she wouldn’t be back, not for a time at any rate. She asked my father to hold the key, though, so she’d know where to find it when the time came.’ He looked around the room. ‘But it never did.’

‘No,’ said Cassandra.

‘But you’re here now,’ Henry said with renewed enthusiasm.

‘Yes.’

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T h e F o r g o t t e n G a r d e n

A noise at the door and they both looked up. ‘I got on to Michael,’

said Robyn, tucking her phone away. ‘He said he’d pop over on Wednesday morning to see what needs doing.’ She turned to Henry.

‘Come now, my love, we’re expected at Marcia’s for lunch and you know how she gets when we’re late.’

Henry raised his eyebrows. ‘Our daughter has many virtues but patience is not chief among them.’

Cassandra smiled. ‘Thanks for everything.’

‘Now don’t you be thinking of trying to move that log yourself,’ he said. ‘No matter how keen you are to get a look upstairs.’

‘I promise.’

As they made their way along the path to the front gate, Robyn turned back to Cassandra. ‘You look like her, you know.’

Cassandra blinked.

‘Your grandmother. You have her eyes.’

‘You met her?’

‘Oh yes, of course, even before she bought the cottage. One afternoon she came into the museum where I was working. She asked questions about local history. Some of the old families in particular.’

Henry’s voice from the cliff edge. ‘Come on, Robyn love. Marcia will never forgive us if the roast burns.’

‘The Mountrachet family?’

Robyn waved at Henry. ‘That’s them. The ones who used to live up at the grand house. The Walkers, too. The painter and his wife, and the lady writer who published fairytales.’

‘Robyn!’

‘Yes, yes. I’m coming.’ She rolled her eyes at Cassandra. ‘He’s got about as much patience as a firecracker on a fire, that husband of mine.’

And then she bustled after him, instructions for Cassandra to call on them any time floating back after her on the sea breeze.

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25

Tregenna, 1975

Tregenna, Cornwall, 1975

The Tregenna Museum of Fishing and Smuggling was nestled in a small whitewashed building on the rim of the outer harbour, and though the handwritten sign posted in the front window was clear about the opening hours, Nell had been in the village for three days before she finally glimpsed a light inside.

She turned the handle and pushed open the low, lace-draped door.

Behind the desk sat a prim woman with shoulder-length brown hair. Younger than Lesley, thought Nell, but with a bearing infinitely older. The woman stood when she saw Nell, so that the tops of her legs pulled the lace cloth and a pile of papers towards her. She had the look of a child caught raiding the cake tin. ‘I—I wasn’t expecting visitors,’

she said, peering over the top of her large glasses.

Nor did she seem particularly pleased to see any. Nell held out her hand. ‘Nell Andrews.’ She glanced at the name plaque on the desk. ‘And you must be Robyn Martin?’

‘We don’t get many visitors, not in the off season. I’ll just find the key.’ She worried the papers on the desk, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘The displays are a little dusty,’ she said, a note of accusation in her voice. ‘But it’s through that way.’

Nell’s gaze followed the sweep of Robyn’s arm. Beyond the closed glass door was a small adjoining room, host to various nets and hooks and rods. Black and white photographs had been hung upon the wall, boats and crews and local coves.

‘Actually,’ said Nell, ‘I’m looking for particular information. The fellow at the post office thought you might be able to help.’

‘My father.’

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T h e F o r g o t t e n G a r d e n

‘Pardon me?’

‘My father’s the postmaster.’

‘Yes,’ Nell said, ‘well, he thought you might be able to help me. The information I’m after isn’t anything to do with fishing or smuggling, you see. It’s local history. Family history, to be precise.’

The change in Robyn’s countenance was instant. ‘Whyever didn’t you say so? I work here at the fishing museum to do my bit for the community, but Tregenna social history is my life. Here.’ She riffled through the pieces of paper she’d been busy with on her desk and thrust one into Nell’s hand. ‘This is the text for a tourist pamphlet I’m putting together, and I’m just finishing the draft of a little article on great houses. I’ve had interest from a publisher in Falmouth.’ She looked at her fine silver-chained wristwatch. ‘I’d be happy to speak with you only I have to be somewhere—’

‘Please,’ said Nell. ‘I’ve come a long way and I won’t take much of your time. If you could just spare me a few minutes.’

Robyn’s lips tightened and she fixed Nell with her mouse-like gaze.

‘I can do better than that,’ she said, nodding decisively. ‘I’ll take you with me.’

c

A thickening layer of fog had blown in with the high tide and conspired with dusk to leach the village of colour. As they climbed higher along the narrow streets, everything was turned a shade of grey. The swift change in conditions had brought an agitation to Robyn’s manner. She walked at a clipped pace so that Nell, despite her own naturally spruce gait, had to work to keep up. Though Nell wondered where it was they were going so fast, the pace was such an impediment to conversation that she couldn’t ask.

At the top of the street, they reached a little white house with a sign that read Pilchard Cottage. Robyn rapped on the door and waited.

There were no lights on inside and she lifted her wrist closer to her eyes to make out the time. ‘Still not home. We tell him always to come home early when the fog sets in.’

‘Who?’

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K a t e M o r t o n

Robyn glanced at Nell as if she’d forgotten for a moment that the other woman was with her. ‘Gump, my grandfather. He goes each day to watch the boats. He was a fisherman himself, you see. He’s been retired twenty years but he’s not happy unless he knows who’s been out and where they were catching.’ Her voice snagged. ‘We tell him not to stay out when the fog’s on the rise, but he won’t be told—’

She broke off and squinted into the distance.

Nell followed her gaze, watched as a patch of thick mist seemed to darken. A figure loomed towards them.

‘Gump!’ called Robyn.

‘No fuss, my girl,’ came a voice from the fog. ‘No fuss.’ He appeared in the gloom, climbed his three concrete steps and turned the key in the lock. ‘Well, don’t just stand there shivering like a pair of winnards,’

he said over his shoulder. ‘Come on in and we’ll have a nice drop of warm.’

In the narrow hallway, Robyn helped the old man out of his salt-encrusted mackintosh and black wellington boots then stowed them on a low wooden bench. ‘You’re damp, Gump,’ she fussed, clutching a handful of his checked shirt. ‘Let’s get you some dry clothes.’

‘Pah,’ said the old man, tapping his granddaughter’s hand. ‘I’ll sit a time by the fire and be dry as a bone by the time you bring me some tea.’

Robyn raised her eyebrows slightly in Nell’s direction as Gump hobbled into the front room: Can you see what I have to deal with?

said the gesture.

‘Gump’s almost ninety but he refuses to move out of his house,’ she said quietly. ‘Between us we make sure someone has supper with him every night. I’m Monday to Wednesday.’

‘He seems well for ninety.’

‘His eyesight’s starting to fail and his hearing isn’t the best, but he still insists on making sure “his boys” get back safely into port, no thought for his own frailties. God help me if he comes to harm on my watch.’ She peered through the glass, wincing as her grandfather tripped over the rug on his way to the armchair. ‘I don’t suppose . . . That is, I wonder whether you’d sit with him while I light the fire and put the kettle on. I’ll feel better once he’s all dried out.’

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Lured by the exquisite promise of finally learning something of her family, there was little Nell wouldn’t agree to. She nodded and Robyn smiled with relief before hurrying through the door after her grandfather.

Gump had sat himself in the tan leather armchair, a homely quilt spread across his lap. For a moment, as she looked at that quilt, Nell thought of Lil and the quilts she’d made for each of her daughters. She wondered what her mother would think about this quest she was on, whether she’d understand why it was so important to Nell to reconstruct the first four years of her life. Probably not. Lil had always believed that a person’s duty was to make the best of the hand they were dealt.

No use wondering what might have been, she used to say, all that matters is what is. Which was all very well for Lil, who knew the truth about herself.

Robyn pushed herself to standing, new flames leaping eagerly from paper to paper on the grate behind her. ‘I’m going to fetch some tea now, Gump, put the supper on to cook. While I’m in the kitchen my friend here . . .’ She looked searchingly at Nell. ‘I’m sorry . . .’

‘Nell, Nell Andrews.’

‘. . . Nell, is going to sit with you, Gump. She’s a visitor to Tregenna and interested in the local families. Perhaps you can tell her a bit about the old town while I’m gone?’

The old man held open palms upon which a lifetime of hauling ropes and threading hooks had written its tale. ‘Ask me anything,’ he said, ‘and I’ll tell you all I know.’

As Robyn disappeared through a low doorway, Nell looked about for somewhere to sit. She settled on a green wing-backed chair by the fire, enjoying the surge of warmth as firelight yawned across her side.

Gump looked up from the pipe he was busy loading and nodded his encouragement. Apparently the floor was hers.

Nell cleared her throat and shifted her feet a little on the rug, wondering where to begin. She decided there was no point beating around the bush. ‘It’s the Mountrachet family I’m interested in.’

Gump’s match sizzled and he puffed vigorously to start his pipe.

‘I’ve been asking about in the village but it seems that no one knows anything about them.’

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K a t e M o r t o n

‘Oh they know about them all right,’ he said on a smoky exhalation.

‘They just don’t talk about them.’

Nell’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Why is that?’

‘The folk in Tregenna like a good yarn, but we’re a superstitious bunch by and large. We’ll chat happily on just about any subject you care to name, but ask about the happenings up there on the cliff and people clam up.’

‘I noticed,’ said Nell. ‘Is it because the Mountrachets were titled aristocrats? Upper class?’

Gump snorted. ‘They had money, but don’t you go talking about class.’ He leaned forward. ‘That was a title paid for by the spilled blood of innocents. Seventeen twenty-four, it was. A wild storm blew up late one afternoon, the fiercest in years. The lighthouse lost its roof and the new oil lamp flame was snuffed out as if it were little better than a candle. The moon was in hiding and the night was black as my boots.’ Pale lips tightened around his pipe. He sucked long and hard, warming to his tale. ‘Most of the local fishing boats had come in early but there was a single sloop still out in the strait, a double-master with a foreign crew.

‘The crew of that sloop never stood a chance. They say there were waves breaking halfway up the Sharpstone cliffs and she was thrown so hard against the rocks that she started to fall to pieces before she even reached the cove. There were newspaper reports and a government inquiry, but they never recovered much more than a few pieces of tattered red cedar from the hull. They blamed the local free traders, of course.’

‘Free traders?’

‘Smugglers,’ said Robyn, who had appeared with the tea tray.

‘But it wasn’t them who stripped the ship of its cargo,’ said Gump.

‘No fear. It was the family that did it, the Mountrachet family.’

Nell took a proffered cup from Robyn. ‘The Mountrachets were smugglers?’

Gump laughed a dry, whiskery laugh and took a swig of tea.

‘They were nothing so dignified as that. Smugglers do their share of liberating overtaxed items from ships that come to grief, but they also do their bit of rescuing the crews. What happened that night in the Blackhurst cove was the work of thieves. Thieves and murderers. They 208