The Forgotten Garden (53 page)

‘She said there was something she wanted to talk to you about.

Something her mum had told her before she died.’

The skin on Cassandra’s neck prickled. ‘What was it? Did she say anything else?’

‘Not to me, and don’t go getting too excited. Knowing the reverence in which she held her old mum, it may well be she thinks you’ll be pleased to learn that Mary spent the best years of her life in service at the grand old house. Or that Rose once paid her a compliment on her silver polishing.’ Ruby closed the grate door, turned towards Cassandra.

‘I don’t suppose the range still works?’

‘It does, actually. We couldn’t believe it.’

‘We?’

‘Christian and I.’

‘Who’s Christian?’

Cassandra ran her fingertips along the table’s rim. ‘Oh, a friend.

Someone who’s been helping with the clean-up.’

Ruby’s brows arched. ‘A friend, huh?’

‘Yeah.’ Cassandra shrugged. Tried to seem nonchalant.

Ruby smiled knowingly. ‘Nice to have friends.’ She made her way to the back of the kitchen, past the window with the broken pane, to the antique spinning wheel. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll get to meet him?’ She reached out and turned the wheel.

‘Careful,’ said Cassandra. ‘Don’t prick your finger.’

‘No indeed.’ Ruby let her fingers skim the top of the turning wheel.

‘I don’t want to be responsible for putting us both to sleep for a hundred years.’ She bit her bottom lip, eyes twinkled. ‘Though it would give your friend an opportunity to rescue us.’

Cassandra felt her cheeks flush. She pretended casualness while Ruby took in the exposed beams of the ceiling, the blue and white tiles 380

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around the stove, the wide floorboards. ‘So,’ she said finally, ‘what do you think?’

Ruby rolled her eyes. ‘You know what I think, Cass, I’m jealous as hell! It’s fabulous!’ She came to lean against the table. ‘Still planning to sell it?’

‘Yeah, I guess so.’

‘You’re stronger than I am.’ Ruby shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t be able to part with it.’

From nowhere, a flash of possessive pride. Cassandra quelled it.

‘I have to. I can’t just leave it sitting here. The maintenance would be too much, especially with me all the way on the other side of the world.’

‘You could keep it as a holiday house, rent it out when you’re not using it. Then we’ll always have somewhere to stay when we need some seaside.’ She laughed. ‘That is, you’ll have somewhere to stay.’ She nudged Cassandra with her shoulder. ‘Come on, show me what’s upstairs. I’ll bet there’s a killer view.’

Cassandra led the way up the narrow stairs, and when they reached the bedroom Ruby leaned against the windowsill. ‘Oh Cass,’ she said, as the wind plucked white tips on the surface of the sea, ‘you’d have people lined up to holiday here. It’s unspoiled, close enough to the village for supplies, far enough away to feel private. It must be glorious at sunset, and then at night when the distant lights of the fishing boats sparkle like little stars.’

Ruby’s comments both excited and frightened Cassandra, for she had given voice to Cassandra’s secret wish, a sentiment she hadn’t even realised she felt until she’d heard it expressed by someone else. She did want to keep the cottage, no matter that she knew the sensible thing was to sell it. The atmosphere of the place had made its way beneath her skin. There was its connection to Nell, but there was something more. A sense that all was well when she was in the cottage and its garden. Well with the world, and well within herself. She felt whole and solid for the first time in ten years. Like a circle complete, a thought without dark edges.

‘Oh my god!’ Ruby turned and clutched Cassandra’s wrist.

‘What!’ Cassandra’s stomach lurched. ‘What is it?’

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‘I’ve just had the most brilliant idea.’ She swallowed, motioned with her hand as she caught her breath. ‘A sleep over,’ she squealed finally.

‘You and me, tonight, here in the cottage!’

c

Cassandra had already been to the market and was leaving the hardware shop with a cardboard box full of candles and matches, when she bumped into Christian. It had been three days since they’d had supper at the pub—there’d been far too much rain to even contemplate returning to the hidden garden over the weekend—and she hadn’t seen or spoken to him since. She felt oddly nervous, could feel her cheeks flushing.

‘Going camping?’

‘Sort of. A friend has come to visit and wants to spend a night in the cottage.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Don’t let the ghosts bite.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘Or the rats.’ He gave a lopsided smile.

She smiled too, then pressed her lips together. The silence drew out like a rubber band, threatened to snap back. She started shyly: ‘Hey, you know . . . You could come up and have a bite of dinner with us?

Nothing fancy but it’ll be fun; if you’re free, I mean? I know Ruby would love to meet you.’ Cassandra flushed and cursed the thread of query that had lifted the end of her sentences. ‘It’ll be fun,’ she said again.

He nodded, seemed to be considering. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Sure. Sounds good.’

‘Great.’ Cassandra felt a ripple beneath her skin. ‘Seven o’clock? And no need to bring anything—as you can see, I’m well stocked.’

‘Oh, hey, give me that.’ Christian took Cassandra’s cardboard box.

She shifted the handles of her plastic grocery bag from around her wrist and scratched the red imprints they’d made. ‘I’ll give you a lift up the cliff walk,’ he said.

‘I don’t want to put you out.’

‘You’re not. I was on my way to see you anyway, about Rose and her marks.’

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‘Oh, I couldn’t find anything else in the scrap—’

‘It doesn’t matter, I know what they were and I know how she got them.’ He gestured towards his car. ‘Come on, we can talk while I drive.’

Christian manoeuvred his car out of the tight parking spot by the water’s edge and drove along the main street.

‘So what is it?’ said Cassandra. ‘What did you find?’

The windows had fogged up and Christian reached out to wipe the windscreen with his palm. ‘When you were telling me about Rose the other day there was something familiar. It was the doctor’s name, Ebenezer Matthews. I couldn’t for the life of me remember where I’d heard it, then early Saturday morning it came to me. At university I took a course on medical ethics, and as part of the assessment we had to write a paper on historical uses of new technologies.’

He slowed the car at a T-intersection and fiddled with the heating.

‘Sorry, it plays up sometimes. Should be warm in a minute.’ He pushed the dial from blue to red, indicated left and started up the steep cliff road. ‘One of the benefits of living back home is that I’ve got ready access to the boxes my life was packed into when my stepmum turned my room into a gym.’

Cassandra smiled, remembering the boxes of embarrassing high-school memorabilia she’d uncovered when she moved back in with Nell after the accident.

‘Took me a while, but finally I found the essay, and sure enough there was his name, Ebenezer Matthews. I’d included him because he was from the same village I’d grown up in.’

‘And? Was there something in the essay about Rose?’

‘Nothing like that, but after I realised who Rose’s Dr Matthews was, I emailed a friend up at Oxford who works in the medical library. She owed me a favour and agreed to send me anything she could on the doc’s patients between 1889 and 1913. Rose’s lifetime.’

A friend. She. Cassandra pushed aside the unexpected surge of envy. ‘And?’

‘Doc Matthews was quite a busy boy. Not at first: for someone who rose to such lofty heights, he came from humble beginnings. Doctor in a small town in Cornwall, doing all the things young doctors in small towns do. His big break, from what I can gather, was meeting 383

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Adeline Mountrachet of Blackhurst Manor. I don’t know why she would have chosen a young doctor like him when her little girl was sick, aristocrats were much more likely to call upon the same old ghost who’d treated Great-Uncle Kernow when he was a boy, but whatever the case Ebenezer Matthews was summoned. He and Adeline must’ve hit it off, too, because after that first consultation he became Rose’s regular doctor. Stayed that way all throughout her childhood, even after she was married.’

‘But how do you know? How did your friend find that sort of information?’

‘A lot of doctors back then kept surgery logs. Records of the patients they saw, who owed them money, treatments they prescribed, articles they published, that sort of thing. Many of the logs wound up in libraries. They were donated, or sold, usually by the doctor’s family.’

They’d reached the end of the road where gravel gave way to grass and Christian pulled the car over onto the narrow parking strip by the lookout. Outside, the wind was buffeting the cliff and the tiny cliff birds huddled together glumly. He switched off the ignition, turned in his seat to face Cassandra. ‘In the last decade of the nineteenth century, Dr Matthews began to make a bit of a name for himself. It seems he wasn’t content with his lot as a country GP, even though his patient list was beginning to resemble a who’s who of local society. He started publishing on various medical matters. It wasn’t very difficult to cross-reference his publications with his log to find out that Rose appears as Miss RM. She becomes a frequent entry after 1897.’

‘Why? What happened then?’ Cassandra realised she was holding her breath, her throat was tight.

‘When Rose was eight she swallowed a sewing thimble.’

‘Why?’

‘Well I don’t know, accident I expect, and it’s beside the point. It wasn’t a big deal—half the British currency has sat inside a child’s stomach at one point or another. They pass through without too much difficulty if they’re left alone.’

Cassandra exhaled suddenly. ‘But it wasn’t left alone. Dr Matthews performed an operation.’

Christian shook his head. ‘Worse than that.’

Her stomach lurched. ‘What did he do?’

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‘He ordered an X-ray, a couple of X-rays, and then he published the pictures in the Lancet.’ Christian reached to the back seat and pulled out a photocopied piece of paper, handed it to her.

She glanced at the article, shrugged. ‘I don’t get it, what’s the big deal?’

‘It’s not the X-ray itself, it’s the exposure.’ He pointed to a line at the top of the page. ‘Dr Matthews had the photographer take a sixty minute exposure. I guess he wanted to be sure he got his picture.’

Cassandra could feel the cold outside her glass window, shimmering against her cheek. ‘But what does it mean? A sixty minute exposure?’

‘X-rays are radiation—haven’t you ever noticed the way your dentist sprints from the room before pushing the X-ray button? An exposure of sixty minutes means that between them Dr Matthews and the photographer fried her ovaries and everything inside them.’

‘Her ovaries?’ Cassandra stared at him. ‘Then how did she conceive?’

‘That’s what I’m saying. She didn’t, she couldn’t. That is, she certainly couldn’t have carried a healthy baby to term. As of 1897, Rose Mountrachet was, to all intents and purposes, infertile.’

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41

Cliff Cottage, 1975

Cliff Cottage, Cornwall, 1975

Despite a ten day delay before contracts were due to be exchanged, young Julia Bennett had been most obliging. When Nell requested early access to the cottage, she’d handed over the key with a wave of her jewellery-laden wrist. ‘Doesn’t worry me a bit,’ she’d said, bangles clacking. ‘You make yourself at home. Lord knows, the key’s so heavy I’ll be happy to have it off my hands!’

The key was heavy. It was big and brass, with intricate swirls at one end, blunt teeth at the other. Nell looked at it, almost the length of her palm. She laid it on the wooden table in the kitchen. The kitchen of her cottage. Well, almost her cottage. Ten days to go.

Nell wouldn’t be in Tregenna when she exchanged. Her flight left London in four days time and when she’d tried to change the booking she’d been told that such late alterations were possible only at exorbitant cost. So she’d decided to go home to Australia as planned. The local solicitors handling her purchase of Cliff Cottage were happy to hold the key for her until she returned. It wouldn’t be long, she’d assured them, she just needed time to sort out her things and then she’d be back for good.

For Nell had decided she was going home to Brisbane for the last time. What had she there to keep her? A few friends, a daughter who didn’t need her, sisters she perplexed. Her antiques shop she would miss, but perhaps she could start afresh here in Cornwall? And when she was here, with more time, Nell would get to the bottom of her mystery. She would learn why Eliza stole her and put her on the boat to Australia. All lives needed purpose, and this would be Nell’s. For otherwise, how would she ever know herself?

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Nell walked slowly about the kitchen, making a mental inventory.

The first thing she intended to do when she got back was to give the cottage a thorough clean. Dirt and dust had long been allowed free rein and every surface was coated. There would be repairs to make, too: the skirting boards would need replacing in sections, there was bound to be wood rot, the kitchen would have to be brought to working order . . .

Of course a village like Tregenna would have any number of local tradesmen available to help, but Nell balked at the idea of employing strangers to work in her cottage. Although made of stone and wood, it was more than a house to Nell. And just as she had tended Lil when she was dying, had refused to pass responsibility into the hands of a kindly stranger, Nell knew she must tend the cottage herself. Use the skills that Hugh had taught her all those years before when she was a little girl, wide-eyed with love for her dad.