The Rose Garden (2 page)

Mark stopped when I stopped, turned to watch my face, and said, ‘Not quite like California, is it?’

‘No.’ This ocean had a very different feel than the Pacific. It seemed somehow more alive. ‘No, this is better.’

I hadn’t heard anyone open the front door behind us but suddenly someone said ‘Eva!’ and, turning, I saw a young woman in jeans and a red sweater, her dark hair cut even shorter than Mark’s. This had to be Susan, I thought, though I wouldn’t have known
her
if we’d met away from Trelowarth. She’d only been seven or eight when I’d last been here. Now she was in her late twenties, grown taller and slender, her smile wide and welcoming. ‘I thought I heard the van.’ Her hug was just as warm. ‘Honestly, Eva, you look just the same. It’s incredible. Even your hair. I always envied you your hair,’ she told me. ‘Mine would never grow like that.’

I didn’t really think much of my hair, myself. My father had liked my hair long, so I’d left it that way. It was easy enough to take care of, no styling required, and whenever it got in the way I just tied it all back.

‘Short hair suits you, though,’ I said to Susan.

‘Yes, well, it’s not by choice.’ She smoothed it with a hand and grinned. ‘I tried to dye it red…’

Mark said, ‘It came out purple.’

‘More maroon, I’d say,’ she set him straight. ‘And when I tried to fix it, it got worse, so I just cut it.’

‘By herself,’ said Mark.

‘Well, naturally.’

‘I could have done as good a job as that,’ he told her dryly, ‘with my garden shears.’

Their banter was affectionate and utterly familiar, and I felt myself relaxing in the way one only did when in the company of friends.

Susan let Mark score that last point and shrugged as she told him, ‘Just drop that suitcase here for now. Claire said to bring you both round to the cottage when you got here. She’s made sandwiches.’

Mark did as he was told and then fell in behind as Susan—with the dogs bouncing round her as though they’d caught some of her energy—led the way along the front walk of the house and down the long green sweep of hill towards the sea, to the place where the old narrow coast path, trampled hard as rutted pavement by the feet of countless ramblers who came up along the clifftops from Polgelly, disappeared into the Wild Wood.

I’d given it that name the summer Claire had read me Kenneth Graeme’s timeless tales of Mole and Rat and Mr. Toad. A chapter a night of
The Wind in the
Willows
and never again could I enter that old sprawling tangle of woods without cocking an ear for the scurrying footsteps of small unseen creatures and feeling a touch of the magic.

I still felt it now, as I followed Mark into the dim, sudden coolness. The air changed. The light changed. The scent of the woods, dank and earthy and rich, rose around me. The woods was an old one, and where it was deepest it stretched down the hill to the edge of the cliffs, but the trees grew so thickly I lost my whole view of the sea. I was closed round in branches and leaves—oak and elder and blackthorn and ghostly pale sycamores, set amid masses of bluebells.

The coast path, which entered the woods as a narrow track, broadened a little in here so two people could walk side by side, as though those who came into these woods felt more comfortable walking that way in this place where the shadows fell thick on the ferns and the undergrowth, and the high trees had a whispering voice of their own when the wind shook their leaves. But I’d never felt fear in these woods. They were peaceful and filled with the joyously warbling songs of the birds tending hidden nests high overhead.

Susan, leading us through, turned to tell me, ‘We actually do have a badger. Claire’s seen it.’

If it was anything like the reclusive Mr. Badger who had ruled the Wild Wood in
The Wind and the Willows
, I didn’t hold out too much hope that I’d catch a glimpse of the creature myself, but it didn’t stop me looking while we walked.

I caught the sharp scent of the coal smoke from Claire’s cottage chimney before we stepped into the clearing, a broad semicircular space blown with green grass that chased to the edge of the cliff, where again I could have a clear view of the sea.

I knew better than to go towards that cliff—there was a wicked drop straight down from there, all unforgiving rock and jagged stone below—but the view itself, framed by the gap in the trees with the flowers and grass in between, and the glitter of sun on the water far out where the fishing boats bobbed, was beautiful.

And facing it, set tidily against the clearing’s edge, the little cottage waited for us with its walls still painted primrose-yellow underneath a roof of sagging slates.

The cottage had been rented out to tourists when I’d come here as a child, to earn a bit of extra income for Trelowarth, but apparently Claire had decided just this past year to move into it herself with all her canvases and paints, and leave the big house for her stepchildren. I couldn’t really blame her. While Trelowarth House was wonderful inside, it was an ancient house with draughts and rising damp and tricky wiring, and it took a lot of work, whereas this little cottage had been put here in the twenties and was snugly made and comfortable.

There wasn’t any need to knock. We just went in, the three of us, and all the dogs came with us, spilling through into the sitting room. Claire had been reading, but she set aside the paperback and came around to fold me into the third hug of warmth and welcome that I’d had this afternoon.

Claire Hallett was a woman who defied the rules of ageing. She looked just as fit approaching sixty as she’d looked those years ago. Her hair might be a little shorter and a paler shade of blonde now from its whitening, but she was still in jeans and giving off that same strong energy, that sense of capability. Her hug seemed to be offering to carry all my burdens. ‘It’s so good to have you here,’ she said. ‘We were so very sorry when we heard about Katrina.’

Then, because I think she knew that too much sympathy on top of my reunion with the three of them might lead to tears I wasn’t ready yet to cry in front of anybody, she turned the talk to other things: the cottage and the decorating projects she had planned for it, and the next thing I knew we were all in the kitchen and sitting at the old unsteady table with its one leg shorter than the others, drinking Claire’s strong tea and eating cheese and pickle sandwiches as though it had been months, not years, since we’d all been together.

Susan raised the subject of the tearoom she was planning. ‘Mark’s against it, naturally,’ she told me. ‘He was never one for change.’

‘It’s not the change,’ Mark said with patience. ‘It’s the simple fact, my darling, that there’s really no demand for it.’

‘Well, we’d create one, wouldn’t we? I’ve told you, if we opened up the gardens more to tourists, we could bring them by the busload.’

‘Buses can’t come through Polgelly.’

‘So you’d bring them in the other way, across the high road from St Non’s. The tourists go there anyway, to see the well—they could come on here afterwards, for lunch.’ Her tone was certain as she turned to her stepmother. ‘You’re on my side, surely?’

‘I’m staying out of it.’ Claire leaned across both of them to pour me a fresh cup of tea. ‘I’ve given up the running of Trelowarth to the two of you, you’ll have to work it out yourselves.’

Susan rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, well, you say you’ve given up Trelowarth, but we all know you could never—’

‘If you’re wanting an opinion,’ Claire said lightly, ‘you might think of asking Eva. That’s her job, you know—promoting things and dealing with the public.’

Suddenly Susan and Mark were both looking at me, and I shook my head. ‘I think I should stay out of it too.’

Mark’s amusement was obvious. ‘Sorry, there’s no likes of that, not with Susan about. She’ll be picking your brains the whole time that you’re here.’

Susan said, ‘You will stay for a while, won’t you? Not just the weekend?’

‘We’ll see.’

Claire, who’d been watching me quietly, glanced at my hand. ‘That’s your mother’s ring, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ The gold Claddagh ring that Bill had slipped from Katrina’s still finger and given to me in the hospital room. It had come to my mother from her Irish grandmother who’d moved across into Cornwall and who, by tradition, had passed down this small ring of gold with its crowned heart held lovingly by two gloved hands, a reminder that love was eternal.

Claire smiled, understanding, as though she knew just what had brought me here, why I had come. Reaching over, she covered my hand with her warm one and said, ‘Stay as long as you like.’

When we came out of the Wild Wood by the coast path and turned up to climb the slope of field towards Trelowarth House, the sun had sunk so low it stretched our shadows long in front of us and glittered in the windows that were watching our approach.

The dogs, having patiently waited while we had our visit with Claire, were all bouncing round Susan now. ‘Feeding time,’ she told us, before taking the dogs round to the back of the house. That was how we’d most often gone in, through the kitchen, but Mark had left my suitcase just inside the main front door, so I went that way with him now and in through the more formal entrance, with its short flight of steps and the vine trailing over the lintel.

As I followed Mark through and he switched on the light, I was happy to see that the house hadn’t changed; to inhale the same scents of old polished wood and wool carpets and comforting mustiness, here in the spacious square hall. Once, this whole space had most likely been paneled in the same wine-dark wood as the sitting-room door on my left and the staircase that angled up just behind that to the bedrooms upstairs, but some earlier Hallett had covered the paneling over with plaster, no doubt in an effort to make the great space seem more welcoming.

Still on my left and beyond the great staircase, a narrower corridor carried on back to the games room and the kitchen at the rear of the house, and off to my right were the doors to the dining room and the big front room.

Beside me Mark waited, my suitcase in hand. ‘We weren’t sure if you’d want your old room or—’

Their thoughtfulness touched me. ‘Yes, please.’

He let me go first up the stairs. They were old stairs, as old as the house, running up from the hall at a perfect right angle to pause at a half landing before doubling back on themselves for the final rise up to the next floor. The stair steps themselves were of stone, worn concave at their centres by centuries of climbing feet, and the walls of both stairway and landing were still the original paneling, wood of the same dark mahogany hue as the old doors downstairs, so that while I was climbing, I couldn’t help feeling I’d somehow stepped into the past.

The first floor looked rather less ancient, with carpets to cover the old floors and softly striped wallpaper brightening things. There were furnishings here that I didn’t recall, but I knew my way round.

And I knew which door led to the room I had shared with Katrina. Being in the far front corner, closest to the road, it had three windows—two that looked towards the sea and one that overlooked the drive, that last one set beside the fireplace with its screen of flowered needlepoint in front.

The double bed still sat in the same place it always had, its headboard to the west wall so its footboard faced the fireplace. Katrina and I had both slept in that bed when we’d stayed here, the six years’ gap between our ages making me a nuisance to her, keeping her awake by constant chattering or stealing more than my share of the covers.

I smiled faintly at the memories, even as I felt the stabbing pain of loss. I fought it back and found my voice as Mark came up behind me in the doorway, and I said, ‘You’ve moved the pictures. The old shepherd and his wife.’

‘Oh, right.’ He looked above the bed, where I was looking. ‘They’re in the dining room, I think.’

‘It’s just as well. They had those eyes that always watched you.’

Mark set the suitcase by the bed and looked around in friendly silence for a moment. Then his gaze came round to me. ‘How are you doing, really?’

I didn’t meet his eyes directly. ‘Fine. I’m fine.’

‘You’re not.’

‘I will be. It takes time, I’m told.’

‘Well, if you need to talk, you know I’m here.’

‘I know.’

He touched my shoulder briefly as he passed. ‘You know the house,’ he said. ‘Just make yourself at home, then.’

‘Thanks.’

The door had a lock, but we’d never been allowed to lock the door as children and I didn’t feel the need to do it now.

There were, in fact, three doors into this room. Trelowarth House was a proper smuggler’s house, with doors that led from room to room as well as to the corridor, a feature that had made it unsurpassed for games of hide-and-seek. Just as the smugglers had been able to evade capture by sneaking from one room to another while the customs men were searching for them, so we children had slipped secretly between the upstairs rooms to the frustration of whoever had been ‘it’.

Besides the main door to the corridor, my room had one more door farther along the same wall that connected with the bedroom just behind here on this east side of the house, a room that Claire had used for sewing, almost never giving it to guests because Uncle George’s cigar smoke had often seeped in from his study beyond.

And the third door was set in the wall by the head of the bed, and led to a smaller front bedroom that had, I recalled, been used mostly for storage.

I didn’t bother looking in there now. There’d be plenty of time for exploring tomorrow. Instead I sat down on the bed, making the bedsprings creak lightly as I looked around at the room from my childhood vantage point. The room looked much the same to me as it had twenty years ago. The walls were still a soft sea green, the bedspread hobnailed white and fringed, the curtains lace and insubstantial, lifting with the cool May breezes blowing through the partly open window. The wide-planked floor was bare, save for an old worn rug between the wardrobe on the two-doored wall and the small rocking chair set in the fireplace corner, and the same old white-framed mirror hung above the chest of drawers between the windows at the front.

In the mornings this was one of the first rooms to catch the light but it was late now, and the afternoon was fading into evening, and the room was full of shadows. I could have put a light on, but I didn’t. I lay back instead, my hands behind my head.

I only meant to rest a moment, then wash up and go downstairs. But lying there, my face brushed by the soft sea breezes blowing in the window, feeling comfortably nostalgic in the dim, high-ceilinged room, my weariness began to weight my limbs until I couldn’t move and didn’t really want to.

By the time the sound of Mark’s sure footsteps had gone all the way downstairs and crossed the hall below, I was no longer listening.

***

I realized my mistake a few hours later when a restless dream brought me back wide-eyed to wakefulness, into the dark of a house that had fallen asleep. Rolling, I turned on the bedside lamp and checked my watch and found that it was nearly midnight.

‘Damn.’ I’d had just enough sleep that I knew I would never drift off again, no matter how much I needed the rest. And I needed it badly. The time change and long hours of travel were taking their toll and if I didn’t get back to sleep now I’d pay a steep price in the morning.

I tried to resettle myself. Getting up, I changed out of my clothes into proper pajamas and snuggled in under the blankets and switched off the light. It was no use. The minutes ticked by.

‘Damn,’ I said again, and giving up, I rose to rummage in my handbag.

I’d had sleeping pills prescribed for nights like these because my doctor had assured me it was normal to do battle with insomnia from time to time while grieving. I had never had to use them, but I’d brought the pills to Cornwall just in case.

I took one pill and climbed back into bed, taking care not to pull all the covers to my side, from force of long habit, and mumbling ‘good night’ to the place where my sister should be.

***

The first thing I thought when I woke was, I wasn’t alone.

I knew where I was. My mind had already made sense of the signals and sorted them into awareness—the sound of the gulls and the scent of the air and the way that the sunlight speared into the room through the unshuttered windows. I heard voices talking quietly somewhere close by, not much above a whisper, the way that people talk when they don’t want to wake someone who’s sleeping. Mark and Susan, I assumed, but then I wasn’t sure because both voices sounded male. I couldn’t catch more than an odd word, fleeting, here and there: ‘away’ was one, and then, quite clear, ‘impossible’.

The voices stopped. Began again, much closer to my head this time, and then I realized that they must be coming through the wall from the next room, the small front bedroom.

Workmen, probably. Old houses like Trelowarth always needed something done, and Mark had mentioned something when we’d been at Claire’s about some sort of trouble with the wiring. My mind was alert enough now to be wary of having strange men in the next room, and rolling, I reached with my one hand to lock the connecting door set in the wall by the head of my bed.

The door handles here were the old-fashioned kind with a thumb latch, without any keyholes, but small sliding bolts had been set just above them, and this bolt shot home with a satisfyingly sturdy click that made me feel a little more secure while I got dressed.

In the corridor outside my room I met Mark, who was coming upstairs. ‘Good, you’re up,’ he said. ‘Susan just sent me to see if you were. She’s got breakfast on. How did you sleep?’

‘Very well, thanks.’ I gave a nod towards the closed door to the spare front room and added, ‘You can tell them they don’t have to be so quiet, now I’m up.’

He looked at me. ‘Tell whom?’

‘The workmen,’ I said, ‘or whoever they are. In there.’

Still looking at me strangely, he opened his mouth to reply and then shut it again, as though wanting to make very sure he was right before speaking. He turned the handle of the room beside my own and pushed the door wide enough to put his head round, then said to me, certain, ‘There’s nobody in here.’

I looked for myself. ‘But I heard them. Two men. They were talking.’

‘Then they must have been outside.’

‘They didn’t sound like they were outside.’

‘Sound plays tricks, sometimes,’ he told me, ‘in old houses.’

Unconvinced, I made a final study of the empty room then let him close the door.

He said, ‘Come down for breakfast.’

Downstairs, Susan had a full cooked breakfast on the go, with sausage spitting in the pan and floured tomatoes sizzling beside them, eggs and toast and juice and coffee that smelled sharp and rich and heavenly and brought my eyes more fully open.

Susan, turning, waved a spatula towards the table. ‘Have a seat, it’s hardly ready.’

The kitchen had had a remodel since I’d last been here, and the table was a larger one than I remembered, but it occupied the same spot by the window that looked out across what used to be the stable yard, now greenly ringed with overhanging trees and with the former stable building now converted to a garage at its farther edge. I sat where I had always sat, my shoulder to the window-wall, and looked across the yard towards the terraced gardens, sheltered by their high brick walls.

The gardens were all separately enclosed and named: the Lower Garden, closest to the house; the Middle Garden; then the largest one, the Upper Garden, and my favorite of them all, the Quiet Garden, which I’d loved best for its name.

These were the legacy of Mark and Susan’s great-great-grandfather, who’d returned from the Boer War with only one leg and a mind in sore need of tranquility. Nostalgia for a simpler time had driven him to cultivate traditional varieties of roses that were falling out of fashion with the rise of the more modern hybrids gaining popularity because they could bloom more than once a season.

Disdainful of these new hybrid perpetuals, he’d cared for his old-fashioned roses with a passion that he’d passed to his descendants, and through the hard work and investment of subsequent Halletts, the business had grown into one of the country’s most highly regarded producers of older historic varieties. In fact, thanks to the family’s obsessive caretaking, these gardens now sheltered some roses that might have been lost altogether to time were it not for Trelowarth.

The sizzling from the cooker brought my gaze back from the window and I watched while Susan turned the sausage.

‘Honestly,’ I said, ‘you didn’t have to go to all this trouble. Cereal and milk would be enough.’

Mark, who’d been pouring the coffee, came over to hand me my mug and sat down in the place just across from me. ‘It’s not for you,’ he assured me. ‘She’s trying to soften me up.’

‘I am not,’ was Susan’s protest.

Mark said, ‘So I guess it’s coincidence, then, that you’ve set your big file of plans for the tearoom out here on the table?’

‘I wanted to look at them.’

‘Wanted to show them to Eva, more like.’

‘I did not.’ Susan scraped the sausages out of the pan and, crossing to the table, set Mark’s plate down, hard, in front of him.

Oblivious, he pointed at the folder with his fork. ‘You’ve got the legends of Trelowarth and that sort of rubbish in there, don’t you?’

Susan passed my plate across for me and, with her own in hand, sat down herself. ‘Of course.’

‘Good. So then you can reassure Eva we don’t have a ghost.’

It was my turn to protest. ‘I never said—’

‘Why would she think there’s a ghost?’ Susan asked.

‘She’s been hearing men’s voices upstairs.’

Susan told him, with feeling, ‘I wish.’

Mark grinned. ‘What, that we had men upstairs?’

‘No, stupid. That we had a ghost. Now
that
would bring the tourists in.’

Mark told her that depended on the ghost.

Ignoring him, she asked me what the voices had been saying, and I shrugged.

‘I couldn’t hear.’

Mark said, ‘Perhaps they came to give a warning.’ Imitating a stern, ghostly voice, he went on, ‘Do not build a tearoom at Trelowarth.’

‘Do you see?’ asked Susan, looking to me for support. ‘You see the sort of thing I have to deal with.’

‘And you love me anyway.’ Her brother’s smile was sure.

‘Yes, well, lucky for you that I do. That’s the only thing keeps me from planting you in the back garden alongside your roses.’

Mark took the threat lightly and turned his attention to me. ‘So then, what are your plans for the day?’

I said, ‘I don’t know. I suppose I should take care of… what I came for.’