The Forgotten Garden (58 page)

I had the strangest dream. I was pregnant, very pregnant. My stomach was huge and tight, and everything was so vivid.’ She rubbed her eyes.

‘I was in the walled garden and the baby started to kick.’

‘It’s all that talk earlier, of Mary’s baby, and Rose, and golden eggs, all getting mixed up together.’

‘Not to mention the wine.’ Cassandra yawned. ‘But it was so real, it felt exactly like the real thing. I was so uncomfortable, and hot, and when the baby kicked it was so painful.’

‘You paint a lovely picture of pregnancy,’ said Ruby. ‘You’re making me glad I never tried it.’

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Cassandra smiled. ‘It’s not much fun in the final months, but it’s worth it in the end. That moment when you finally hold a tiny new life in your arms.’

Nick had cried in the delivery room, but Cassandra hadn’t. She’d been too present, too much a part of the powerful moment, to react in such a way. To cry would have necessitated a second level of feeling, an ability to step outside events and view them within a larger context.

Cassandra’s experience had been too immediate for that. She’d felt fired from within by a sort of dizzy jubilation. As if she could hear better, see better than she ever had before. Could hear her own pulse pumping, the lights humming above, her new baby’s breaths.

‘Actually, I was pregnant once,’ said Ruby. ‘But only for about five minutes.’

‘Oh, Ruby.’ Cassandra was awash with sympathy. ‘You lost the baby?’

‘In a manner of speaking. I was young, it was a mistake, he and I agreed it was stupid to go through with it. I figured there was plenty of time later for all that.’ She lifted her shoulders, then smoothed her sleeping bag across her legs. ‘Only problem was, by the time I was ready I no longer had the necessary ingredients at my disposal.’

Cassandra leaned her head to the side.

‘Sperm, m’dear. I don’t know whether I spent my entire thirties with PMT, but for whatever reason the greater population of menfolk and I failed to see eye to eye. By the time I met a bloke I could live with, the baby ship had sailed. We tried for a while but—’ she shrugged—

‘well, you can’t fight nature.’

‘I’m sorry, Ruby.’

‘Don’t be. I’m doing all right. I have a job I love, good friends.’ She winked. ‘And come on, you’ve seen my flat. I’m onto a winner there.

No room to swing a cat, but hey—I haven’t got a cat to swing.’

Cassandra smiled.

‘You make a life out of what you have, not what you’re missing.’

Ruby lay down again and snuggled into her sleeping bag. She pulled it up around her shoulders. ‘Nightie-night.’

Cassandra continued to sit for a while, watching shadows dance along the walls as she thought about what Ruby had said. About the life that she, Cassandra, had built out of the things, the people, she was missing. Was that what Nell had done too? Forsaken the life 415

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and the family she’d been given, to focus instead on the one she’d been without? Cassandra lay down and closed her eyes. Let the night-time sounds drown out her disquieting thoughts. The sea breathing, waves crashing against the great black rock, treetops shushing in the wind . . .

The cottage was a lonely place, isolated by day but even more so once darkness fell. The road didn’t extend all the way up the cliff, the entrance to the hidden garden had been closed off, and beyond it lay a maze whose route was difficult to follow. It was the sort of place one might live in and never see another soul.

A sudden thought and Cassandra gasped. Sat upright. ‘Ruby,’ she said, then louder, ‘Ruby.’

‘Asleep,’ came the slurred response.

‘But I just figured it out.’

‘Still asleep.’

‘I know why they built the wall, why Eliza went away. That’s why I had the dream—my unconscious figured it out and was trying to let me know.’

A sigh. Ruby rolled over and propped herself on a bent arm. ‘You win, I’m awake. Just.’

‘This is where Mary stayed when she was pregnant with Ivory, with Nell. Here, in the cottage. That’s why William didn’t know she was pregnant.’ Cassandra leaned closer to Ruby. ‘That’s why Eliza went away: Mary was here instead. They kept her hidden in the cottage, built the wall so that no one would accidentally catch sight of her.’

Ruby rubbed her eyes and sat up.

‘They turned this cottage into a cage until the baby was born and Rose was made a mother.’

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44

Tregenna, 1975

Tregenna, Cornwall, 1975

The afternoon before she was due to leave Tregenna, Nell went a last time to Cliff Cottage. She took the white suitcase with her, filled with the documents and research she’d collected during her visit.

She wanted to look over her notes and the cottage seemed as good a place as any in which to do so. At least that’s what she’d told herself when she’d decided to make her way up the steep cliff road. It wasn’t true of course, not completely. For although she had wanted to look over the notes, that wasn’t why she’d come to the cottage. She’d come simply because she couldn’t stay away.

She unlocked the door and pushed it open. Winter was approaching and the cottage was cool: stale air sat thick and heavy in the hallway.

Nell took the suitcase upstairs to the bedroom. It pleased her to look out over the silver sea, and on her last visit she’d spied a little bentwood chair in the corner of the room that would serve her purposes very well. The cane had unravelled from the back but that was no impediment. Nell positioned the chair by the window, sat tentatively and opened the white suitcase.

She leafed through the papers inside: Robyn’s notes on the Mountrachet family, the contact details of the detective she’d hired to look into Eliza’s whereabouts, searches and correspondence from the local solicitors about her purchase of Cliff Cottage. Nell found the letter relating to the property boundaries and flipped it over to study the surveyor’s map. She could see quite clearly now the area young Christian had told her was a garden. She wondered who on earth had bricked up the gate, and why.

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As she pondered, the paper slipped from Nell’s hand and fluttered to the ground. She reached down to pick it up and something caught her eye. Damp weather had buckled the skirting board, pulled it loose from the wall. A piece of paper was wedged behind. Nell caught the corner between her fingers and retrieved it.

A small piece of card, spotted with foxing, on which a woman’s face had been drawn, framed by an arch of brambles. Nell recognised her from the portrait she’d seen in the gallery in London. It was Eliza Makepeace, but there was something different about this sketch. Unlike the Nathaniel Walker portrait in London that made her look untouchable, this one was somehow more intimate. Something in the eyes suggested that this artist had been better acquainted with Eliza than had Nathaniel. Bold lines, certain curves, and the expression: something in her eyes both compelled Nell and confronted her.

Nell smoothed over the top of the card. To think it had been lying there in wait for so long. She pulled the book of fairytales from the suitcase. She hadn’t been precisely sure why she’d brought it with her to the cottage, only that there seemed a pleasant symmetry in bringing the stories home, back to the very place in which Eliza Makepeace had written them. Undoubtedly silly, embarrassingly sentimental, but there you are. Now Nell was glad she had. She opened the cover and slipped the sketch inside. That would keep it safe.

She leaned back against the chair and ran her fingers over the book’s cover, the smooth leather and raised centre panel with its illustration of a maiden and a fawn. It was a beautiful book, as beautiful as any that had passed through Nell’s antiques shop. And it was so well preserved, decades spent in Hugh’s care had done it no harm.

Though it was earlier times she sought to recall, Nell found her mind returning over and again to Hugh. In particular, the nights he’d read her bedtime stories from the fairytale book. Lil had been concerned, worried they might be too scary for a little girl, but Hugh had understood. In the evenings, after dinner, when Lil was clearing the day away, he would collapse back into his wicker chair and Nell would curl up in his lap. The pleasant weight of his arms wrapped around her to grasp the edges of the book, the faint smell of tobacco on his shirt, the rough whiskers on his warm cheek catching her hair.

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Nell sighed steadily. Hugh had done well by her, he and Lil both.

All the same, she blanked them out and willed her mind back further.

For there was a time before Hugh, a time before the boat trip to Maryborough, the time of Blackhurst and the cottage and the Authoress.

There—a white cane garden chair, sun, butterflies. Nell closed her eyes and clutched the memory’s tail, let it drag her into a warm summer’s day, a garden where shade spilled cool across a sprawling lawn. Air filled with the scent of sunbaked flowers . . .

The little girl was pretending to be a butterfly. A woven wreath of flowers encircled her head and she was holding her arms out to the sides, running in circles, fluttering and swooping while the sunlight warmed her wings. She felt so grand as the sun turned the white cotton of her dress to silver.

‘Ivory.’

At first the little girl did not hear, for butterflies do not speak the languages of men. They sing in sweetest tone with words so beautiful grown-up ears cannot hear them. Only children notice when they call.

‘Ivory, come quickly.’

There was a sternness to Mamma’s voice now so the little girl swooped and fluttered in the direction of the white garden chair.

‘Come, come,’ said Mamma, reaching out her arms, beckoning with the pale tips of her fingers.

With a warm happiness spreading beneath her skin, the little girl climbed up. Mamma wrapped her arms around the little girl’s waist and pressed cool lips against the skin beneath her ear.

‘I’m a butterfly,’ the little girl said, ‘this chair is my cocoon—’

‘Shh. Quiet now.’ Mamma’s face was still pressed close and the little girl realised she was looking at something beyond. The little girl turned to see what it was that held Mamma’s attention so.

A lady was coming towards them. The little girl squinted into the sun to make some sense of this mirage. For this lady was different from the others who came to visit Mamma and Grandmamma, the ones who stayed for tea and games of bridge. This lady looked somehow like a girl stretched to grown-up height. She wore a dress of white cotton and her red hair was only loosely tied in place.

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The little girl looked about for the carriage that must have brought the lady up the drive, but there was none. It seemed that she had materialised from thin air, as if by magic.

Then the little girl realised. She caught her breath, filled with wonder. The lady was not walking from the direction of the entrance, she had come from inside the maze.

The little girl was forbidden to enter the maze. It was one of the first and sternest rules; both Mamma and Grandmamma were always reminding her that the way was dark and filled with untold dangers.

So serious was the decree that even Papa, who could usually be relied upon, dared not disobey.

The lady was still hurrying directly towards them, half walking, half skipping. She had something with her, a brown-paper parcel, under her arm.

Mamma’s own arms tightened around the little girl’s middle so that pleasure slipped towards discomfort.

The lady stopped before them.

‘Hello Rose.’

The little girl knew this was Mamma’s name and yet Mamma said nothing in return.

‘I know I’m not supposed to come.’ A silvery voice, like a spider’s thread, which the little girl would have liked to hold between her fingers.

‘Then why have you?’

The lady held out her parcel, but Mamma did not take it. Her grip tightened again. ‘I want nothing from you.’

‘I don’t bring it for you.’ The lady put the parcel on the seat. ‘It is for your little girl.’

c

The parcel had contained the book of fairytales, Nell remembered that now. There had been a discussion later, between her mother and father: she had insisted on the book’s banishment, and he had eventually agreed, taken it with him. Only he hadn’t thrown it away. He had put it in his studio, next to the battered copy of Moby-Dick. And he had read it to Nell, when she sat with him, when her mother was ill and unaware.

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Thrilled by the memory, Nell stroked the front cover again. The book had been a gift from Eliza. She opened it carefully to the place where the ribbon bookmark had lain for sixty years. It was deep plum, only slightly frayed where the weave had begun to unravel, and it marked the beginning of a story called ‘The Crone’s Eyes’. Nell began to read about the young princess who didn’t know she was a princess, who journeyed across the sea to the land of lost things to bring back the crone’s missing sight. It was distantly familiar, as a favoured tale from childhood ought to be. Nell placed the bookmark in its new spot and closed the book, laid it back on the windowsill.

She frowned and leaned closer. There was still a gap in the spine where the ribbon had been.

Nell opened the book again; the pages fell automatically once more to

‘The Crone’s Eyes’. She ran her finger down the inside of the spine—

There were pages missing. Not many, only five or six, barely noticeable, but missing all the same.

The excision was neat. No rough edges, tight up against the binding.