The Garden House

by Marcia Willett

  She leaves the high moorland road behind her, passing between dry-stone walls and banks of furze, and now she is here, turning into the gateway that serves both properties, and then into the yard beside the Pig Pen. She parks in the small open-fronted barn, switches off the engine, opens the door and climbs out. It’s only a few weeks since Pa’s funeral but already everything seems different. There’s nothing now to distract her from the fact that she is here alone, the Pig Pen is hers, and she will never see Pa again.

  She turns the key in the back door and lets herself into the utility room. It leads into a hall that divides the two bedrooms, each with its loo and shower. The Pig Pen and the Hen House were built as holiday lets and are practical and convenient. El drops her case just inside her bedroom, picks up some letters from the mat inside the front door, and climbs the wooden staircase that rises up to the big room, which is kitchen, dining-room and sitting-room. Its high roof, criss-crossed with heavy beams, has Velux windows, which fill the big space with light, and at the end is a sliding glass door that opens out on to a large paved area. At this end the ground floor of the house is built against the bank and there are steps leading down from the terrace into the small garden. Everything is paved to make upkeep simple, but the dry-stone walls support foxgloves, stonecrop, ivy-leaved toadflax and ferns, and the orchard with its old apple trees is a delight.

  El stands beside the long wooden table separating the kitchen from the sitting-room, looking around her. Nothing has been changed since Pa died. Her own things, belongings that she’s left during the few years he has lived here, are here too. Her books are amongst his on the shelves, some pottery she bought at the Pannier Market in Tavistock is on the table, her shawl thrown across one of the two sofas. Oddly, her first reaction is a sudden weariness. It occurs to her that she has been fighting for years: fighting for her right to see Pa; fighting the pressure to accept her mother’s viewpoint; fighting the insidious feeling that she is disloyal. And all the while she’s had Pa at her back to lean against. Now she has the odd sensation that she is falling. Desolation seizes her and she feels afraid. What made her think she could do this? Is it simply stubbornness that led her to announce she intended to live in the Pig Pen; to try to make a life for herself here?

  El looks up at the massive beams supporting the roof and then out on to the terrace where Pa has filled big terracotta pots with shrubs and bulbs. She glances down at the letters she is still holding in her hand: the usual circulars and advertising leaflets, Pa’s Dartmoor News magazine. One, however, is handwritten and addressed to her, so she drops the others on to the table and tears open the envelope. The address at the top of the single sheet of paper is ‘The Old Rectory’ and underneath is a telephone number. She reads the words.

  ‘Don’t be lonely, El. We would love to see you. We miss him, too, so stay in touch. Very much love, Tom and Cass xx’

  El gives a little gasp – something between tears, laughter and relief. These are her father’s old friends, people that he loved and who loved him. She looks at her phone and rereads the text from Angus. Suddenly she is filled with courage. Presently she will make a plan: go shopping for supplies, let people know she is here. She turns and fills the kettle and switches it on. She is home.

  * * *

  The lunch party at the Bedford has reached the possibility of a pudding stage.

  ‘You haven’t told us how Plum is,’ Cass says. ‘Has Ian seen the Appointer yet?’

  Angus lays down the menu. He’s delighted with the news that his son-in-law is to be posted back to the West Country, to Devonport, but ever since Plum told him the news he’s been turning an idea over in his mind. He wonders whether to share it with these two friends; to ask their advice.

  ‘He has. They’re coming back,’ he tells them. ‘Plum is so pleased. She’s coming down tomorrow. They wondered whether to let the London flat but I think now that they’ve decided to keep it for long leaves and for when the girls are home, and to look for somewhere small to rent down here. I had this idea that they could stay with me. After all, the house is plenty big enough so it’s silly for them to be renting. Ian will be at sea a great deal so it seems the obvious thing. What d’you think?’

  ‘I think it’s great that they’re coming back,’ answers Cass at once, ‘even if it’s just for a couple of years. That’s really good news. Why don’t you suggest that they stay with you until they find a place of their own and then let it gradually dawn on them that it’s not worth moving out? Especially if they’ve still got the flat in London to dash away to when he’s on leave, or for the theatre or to meet up with the girls.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ agrees Kate. ‘They won’t feel pressured and then they’ll begin to see that they have the best of both worlds. It’s like me. Living down on my rock in Cornwall and then coming back to stay with Cass and Tom when I need to party and see the family.’

  ‘How devious you are,’ observes Angus admiringly. ‘I would have just come straight out with it and put them on the spot.’

  ‘Will they be home in time for Christmas?’ asks Cass.

  He nods happily. ‘It’s going to be a good one. They were still out in Washington last Christmas so we’ve got to make up for lost time.’

  ‘Excellent,’ says Kate. ‘It’s the sensible thing for them to come to you for Christmas and then you just let things take their course. There’s always my cottage, remember, if they decide to rent. I haven’t got new tenants yet.’

  ‘We must have a party,’ says Cass. ‘All of you and all of us…’

  ‘Not forgetting El,’ adds Kate, ‘though she might go back to her own family, I suppose.’

  ‘We must still make sure she knows she’s invited,’ says Cass firmly.

  ‘I think we need several parties,’ suggests Angus, entering into the spirit of this idea. ‘Plum is first class at parties.’

  He thinks how wonderful it would be to have her back, filling his big, quiet house with her life-affirming presence, with her friends and their children. Plum is so positive, so all-embracing.

  ‘I think it’s the perfect answer all round,’ says Cass. ‘Ian will be off to sea and Plum will be missing both her girls now that Lauren’s gone off to uni, and didn’t you tell us that Alice is flat-sharing with a friend? Plum will be suffering from empty-nest syndrome. Anyway we need something to keep Tom cheerful. He’s doing his GOM thing about downsizing and it’s driving me mad.’

  ‘GOM?’ Angus is puzzled.

  ‘This man is hopeless,’ says Cass to Kate. ‘First FOMO. Now GOM. We need to take him in hand.’ She turns back to Angus. ‘Grumpy old man, darling. I can’t believe you didn’t know that.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with living with sailors,’ says Kate, smiling at Angus’s expression. ‘Have you never heard the definition of a conversation in the Mess? Insult, followed by personal abuse, followed by physical violence, but don’t take my word for it. Ask Plum or Ian. Now then. Who’s having a pudding?’

  CHAPTER THREE

  El moves about the cottage, switching on the heating and the fridge, unpacking her things, trying to accustom herself to her father’s absence, wondering what she might want to change. Nothing immediately springs to mind. The cottage has always seemed like a shared space. When he first moved in, she came to stay and they chose furniture, paintings, kitchenware together. Her mother had taken most of the family belongings with her, and Pa had decided that the Pig Pen was to be a fresh start. They had a great deal of fun choosing what might work in this big open area. Occasionally El wondered if they might be enjoying themselves too much: this, after all, was the result of a divorce, of his unfaithfulness. Sometimes she wondered if it were a kind of relief for both of them to be free of her mother’s controlling personality. This made her feel guilty, but didn’t prevent her from enjoying the experience.

  Freddie came to visit. El knew that she and Pa felt very slightly like naughty children who have behaved badly but aren’t really sorry.

 
‘I hope he likes it,’ Pa said just before Freddie’s first arrival, looking around anxiously lest there should be something his son might find tasteless. El knew that he felt badly that there were only two bedrooms and so it was difficult to accommodate Freddie. One of the sofas could be converted into a comfortable bed made up with duvets and pillows, which is where Pa put his friends when they came to stay, but Eleanor knew that Freddie would be relieved. He would feel less compromised, less disloyal, if he could say to his mother that he wasn’t actually staying at the Pig Pen. He booked in at the Bedford Hotel and El guessed that he would be more comfortable knowing he could make his escape; that he need not be drawn into those long intimate after-supper conversations, which might demand too much of him or compromise him. He is non-confrontational; he likes everybody to be happy. He can’t see that his expectation is a triumph of hope over experience. It was a good visit, though. He and Pa did their one-arm, man-type hug when Freddie left, promising to return soon.

  ‘I think he was OK with it,’ Pa said, as they waved him off up the track.

  He stood for a moment, listening to the sound of the car engine fading, and then turned back, stooping to twitch the dead head from a flower in a tub, tweaking out a weed. She hadn’t known what to say. Pa never spoke of the divorce or the reason for it. Sometimes she wondered if he might still be seeing the woman with whom he had the affair but he never mentioned her, nor was there ever any sign of another female presence at the Pig Pen.

  El wishes that she had the approval of her family for this big adventure in her life but, although it has been agreed that Freddie should inherit everything their mother took with her in the divorce settlement and that El should have the Pig Pen, there is no sense of encouragement. Nobody could have expected that Pa should die when he was barely sixty, so none of them had thought much about the future, but she would have appreciated a friendly voice from the people closest to her.

  She goes out from the sitting-room on to the little terrace and looks at her phone. Freddie messaged her yesterday, sending his love, Angus has offered company or help, or anything she might need to settle in, but there are three new messages. Two are from her uni friends, sending love, asking when they can come to stay. The third one is from Will.

  Hope you’re OK. Have you moved in yet?

  She stares at the message, surprised, and pleased, too. Will: she hadn’t expected anything from him. Her relationship with Will is an ambivalent one. When her mother and his father became an item, Will was as unenthusiastic about it as El and Freddie were. He and Freddie were nearly twenty-three, Eleanor seventeen.

  ‘But how are we all supposed to live together?’ she demanded of her mother. ‘I mean, we don’t know these people. We can’t just suddenly become a family.’

  She was indignant, Freddie was troubled, Will was cool and unapproachable. It was fortunate that Freddie was already in his fifth year of his medical course and Will had joined an airline as a junior first officer. He often spent holidays abroad with friends. After the wedding, El hated moving into Roger’s house; being allotted a small bedroom, bumping into Will on the landing on those rare occasions when he came home, adjusting to Roger’s presence. It wasn’t that she disliked Roger – he was an inoffensive, kindly man – it was all just so weird. Her mother managed to imply that it was her father’s fault, that if he hadn’t behaved so badly they wouldn’t be in this position now, but El was very relieved when Pa bought the Pig Pen and she could escape for the major part of each holiday and alternate Christmases, despite her mother’s wrath and Freddie’s pleadings. Will kept clear, too. El went to university and their relationship, such that it was, continued at a distance.

  Yet she understands Will. She knows that he was resentful that his father should marry this strong-willed woman, who moved in and clearly intended to take over all their lives. Will made no scenes, caused no arguments, he simply disappeared away into his own life. Several times he brought home his flat-mate, a gay man called Christian. El liked him, and liked the way he and Will bantered together, but her mother was convinced that Will was gay after he brought him to the first New Year’s party Roger gave soon after the move back to Dorchester from Devon.

  Now, as she stares at his text, El remembers how touched she was when Will asked if he could attend Pa’s funeral; pleased when he hugged her afterwards and told her how well she’d organized it.

  She suddenly remembers that very first Christmas after the wedding, with them all together in the new house, at the Boxing Day party that her mother insisted should be given so that their mutual friends should see how happy they all were. El was embarrassed and not at all happy. Towards the end of the party she took rather a large swig from Freddie’s wine glass and, in a silly fit of devil-may-care misery, she seized a piece of mistletoe, held it over Will’s head and kissed him. It was not intended to be a sisterly action – quite the contrary, as if she were trying to show their parents that she refused to accept the relationship. Taken off guard, he responded, pulling her close to him, before suddenly pushing her away. Both of them were shocked, and El, feeling confused by her reaction to his kiss and humiliated by her foolishness, dropped the mistletoe and fled to her room, hoping that in the crush nobody would notice. She stayed in bed until late the next morning and by the time she made a reluctant appearance it was to find that Will had already left to visit friends for the rest of the holidays. By the time she saw him again she was able to pretend that it was all part of the Christmas madness; almost that it had never happened. Certainly Will never mentioned it.

  Now, four years on, she looks at his message, remembers his kindness at the funeral, and wonders if some kind of friendship might be salvaged. She types a reply – Not really. Missing Pa. Got to sort his clothes – and sends it before she can change her mind. She looks again at her messages and she goes back into the cottage. It’s time to do the thing she’s been dreading for the last few weeks, which is to clear out Pa’s bedroom. Soon she will have visitors to stay and she has to make his room a guest-room.

  Slowly, reluctantly, she goes downstairs and opens his bedroom door. Standing just inside, she looks around. She’s done this several times since he died: looking for echoes of him, reminders of his presence. When Freddie stayed for the funeral she changed the sheets, tidied the bathroom, but she left the essentials of him so that Freddie should remember the father they’d shared.

  ‘You don’t mind?’ she asked tentatively, the night before the funeral. ‘Me having the Pig Pen, I mean? You’ll get all of Mum’s estate, of course, and Pa’s life insurance will be split between us, but it seems a bit weird somehow, me having this now…’

  ‘It’s fine,’ he answered quickly. ‘Honestly, El, it’s not a problem. I wouldn’t want it anyway. It’s not my scene.’

  ‘No, I get that, but it would be more fair to sell it and split it between us.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s all been dealt with. Let’s not talk about it now.’

  Once he’d gone she’d stripped the bed, flung a throw across it and closed the door, but now she looks at those built-in cupboards and drawers full of Pa’s clothes and knows that she must sort them out, take them to a charity shop. When she asked Freddie if there was anything he’d like to keep he selected two pairs of cuff links, several books and a small watercolour of a moorland scene, asking first if she minded.

  ‘Of course not,’ she said, pleased that he wanted these special things. ‘And I shan’t be getting rid of any of the books or paintings or things like that. Only his clothes and shoes. So if you think of anything else, let me know.’

  He hesitated and she wondered if he might be going to ask if he should take anything for their mother. Pa’s death had been so sudden, so unexpected, that she decided it would be unfair to Roger to cancel the expensive holiday they had booked and they hadn’t appeared at the funeral. Freddie did his best to explain this tactfully, reasonably, but El knew how humiliated her mother would feel to face all the friends who knew what Pa ha
d done and was glad to have an excuse to stay away.

  But all Freddie said now was: ‘Do you need any help with anything?’

  ‘There’s really only his clothes. Angus is going to check through all his papers, all the official stuff. But thanks for offering. I’ll let you know if I have problems. And I hope everything goes really well with you and Sarah.’

  He was telling her at supper after the funeral about his new girlfriend, a radiologist at his hospital, and how they might be getting a flat together. El was pleased for him, told him that she must bring Sarah down for a visit. She found him a bag in which to put his keepsakes, gave him a hug.

  Now, as she opens the cupboard doors and stares inside, she realizes that she will need bags into which she must pack the clothes. Resisting the urge to close the doors again, to postpone the moment, she begins to bring out the trousers, shirts and jackets and pile them on to the bed. She glances at Pa’s radio and CD player standing on top of the chest and switches it on. The CD starts turning and begins to play. Earth, Wind & Fire: ‘Star bright, star light…’, one of Pa’s favourites. Eleanor hesitates, her arms full of clothes. Tears rush to her eyes and she bows her head, burying her face in his soft cotton shirts. After a moment she straightens up, piles them on to the bed and begins to fold them. A text pings in and she takes out her phone to look at it. It’s from Will.

  Would you like some help with that? I could come down on Wednesday morning for twenty-four hours.

  It’s odd how unexpected kindness is the undoing of her. She sits down on the edge of the bed beside the pile of shirts, takes a deep breath. Why not accept his offer, accept help? She’s sometimes wondered how it must have been for Will when his mother died, how he felt about his father remarrying, and how much he must have resented her mother. She texts: