The full-sized pram parked there was of the boneshaker variety, and probably a collector’s item too. It was filled with more magazines, more shoeboxes of tin cars and broken necklaces.
‘Dratted magazines,’ she muttered in exasperation, lifting them up and placing them with less than her usual care on an adjoining rafter. ‘Ouch!’ Something square and wooden that had been sitting patiently beneath the pile toppled off its rafter and banged on the board of the ceiling. Carys caught at it quickly, terrified the edges might break through into the room below. It looked like a box made out of shiny dark wood. A medium-sized rectangular box. And yet not a box.
‘Bloody hell!’ Carys’ mind cleared in an instant. It was a camera. A very old, very precious camera. It was a folding box camera. Of the wet collodion method. Or was that the dry? Carys’ idea of early photographic methods was a tad vague. She was more of the digital variety herself. But Dad had hauled them around enough museum cabinets showing the history of photography for her to recognise this as one of the first portable cameras. The kind that ladies and gentlemen of Victorian and Edwardian times could take out into the field to take photos on the spot without dragging an entire studio with them.
She lifted it up, slowly. Even in the light of the distant bulb and her torch, she could see it was beautifully made.
‘Carys? Carys, are you up there?’
She jumped, nearly toppling over. ‘I’m just in the loft. Down in a minute, Mam,’ she called.
‘Well, you be careful, cariad. There are all sorts of things up there.’
‘Yes, Mam.’ Carys flashed the torch carefully in the corner of the eaves where the camera had been wedged. She pushed aside a pile of papers and placed the camera as far back as she could under the narrowest part of the eaves. Sure enough, there was something else in the far corner. A wooden box. Another camera, maybe?
‘I’ll put the kettle on, then, shall I, cariad?’
‘Yes please, Mam. I’m coming now.’ She lifted the box until it was resting next to her. A small catch held it shut. Carys opened it. Not a camera, then. Just a box. A strange musky smell with a sharp chemical edge, almost like vinegar gone stale, floated up towards her. Even in the light of the torch she could see the prints were sepia in colour, rather than black and white. It was of a group of men and women posed rather stiffly on the front steps of Plas Eden. From their dress, she guessed it was Victorian, or Edwardian, at the latest, and not the ladies and gentlemen of the family, but the servants who kept the place running.
Underneath, there were more. A young girl in a maid’s uniform bending to smell a rose. A horse and carriage, with the driver standing to attention at the side of his horse. A young man posing with a wheelbarrow. Carys’ heart began to race. Despite the ominous sounds from the kitchen of cupboards being opened and the kettle boiling furiously, she couldn’t resist pulling out another, this time of a group in the garden. Young men, old men. And right at the centre, smartly dressed and looking very conscious of his status, Carys looked down into features that had just a touch of Dad about the eyes.
‘Mam!’ she called. ‘Mam, you’ve just got to see what I’ve found!’
‘Very well, cariad. Have we got any of those teacakes left?’
‘We finished them yesterday,’ Carys called back. ‘But I’m sure there are some in the freezer. Second shelf, I think? I’ll come and get them now. And there’s the rest of the birthday cake Gwenan brought.’
She pressed the photographs into the box and began fitting on the lid. In her haste, she missed a couple. One was a postcard, tucked in amongst the larger prints. Cary grabbed it as it fell. It was old, like the photographs. A square, rather forbidding-looking mansion looked out from between a formal arch of trees. The other was a print, which was floating down to the rafters at her feet, where it landed, face up.
It was the eyes that caught her attention. Sharp, arresting eyes. Carys crouched down and shone the torch on the image. It was a woman with her hair piled on the top of her head, wearing a long skirt and loosely swathed in a kind of apron that appeared to cover her from chest to ankles. Not a beautiful face. Not even a handsome face. Much, much too well lived-in and too striking to be called either. Skin settled tight over the prominent bones, sculpturing her features around the large eyes. She looked out at the viewer, clear-eyed, as if to challenge any who might choose to judge. Her right hand was resting on a wooden table, fingers curled around an instrument of some kind, the other resting lightly on the shoulder of a small child.
‘Kettle’s boiled.’
‘Coming!’ Carys stared at the photograph. The photograph stared back at her. The woman she had never seen before, but the child – Carys’ scalp was prickling, as if she had landed, head first, on a bed of sea urchins. She knew that face. Given the age of the pictures, the woman must be long dead. Most probably the child, too. And yet she knew the smile on that impish little face, and the eyes that gazed out boldly at the viewer, displaying none of the wariness of the adult. The feeling was so vivid it seemed to take Carys over completely.
‘Have you seen the bread, cariad?’ Mam must be getting really hungry.
‘In the breadbin, Mam.’
‘Oh, so it is. Silly me. I’ll put some on, then, shall I?’
‘It’s okay: I’m on my way. It’ll only take a second to find those teacakes.’
Carys placed the photograph back in the box, pushed the camera hastily behind a stash of magazines until she had a chance to retrieve it and, tucking the photographs under her arm, made her way back downstairs.
There was one more day to live through, and then he would be gone and I would never see him again.
We were all quiet that day, I think. He was well-liked among the staff, and he was the familiar face of the Meredith Charity Hospital. And for more than one, the fear of the unknown was creeping in at the prospect of the new manager starting tomorrow.
For me, I wished that day gone as quickly as it could be. Parting might be such sweet sorrow for Juliet in the play, but I had no wish to prolong the pain. I wanted it finished. Now. So that he could go to his new life in Plas Eden, and I could lick my wounds in private. I’d live. Heaven knows how; but I’d live.
As the day drew to its end, I kept myself employed, waiting for the inevitable summons. He had made time for a personal word of farewell with all the members of staff. I had watched them going in, and coming out again, with tears in their eyes and clutching a small gift. I was speaking to Matron in the hallway, when the message came that Mr Meredith wished to speak to me.
‘Well, then. Hurry along,’ said Matron, watching me with a smile. A knowing kind of a smile: one that had me flustered as I made my way towards the familiar office. This was not exactly what I had intended. Calm. Professional. Grateful. Full of good wishes for his future. Not with my blood banging in my ears like a drum.
‘Come on in,’ he said, looking up with a smile as I knocked on the open door.
I don’t know what else he said. The usual things, I imagine. How he had appreciated my work for the hospital and wished me well for the future. I just knew I had to get myself out of there, as quickly as could be. And finally he reached into a drawer at one side of his desk, and brought out a large wooden box.
‘I wasn’t certain what kind of supplies you might need,’ he said, a little awkwardly, placing the box on the desk. ‘So I have given you the best selection I could find. Brushes. Pencils. Colours. And paper, of course.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. My voice sounded reasonably steady. Now I could make my escape. ‘I will make good use of them.’ I reached towards the box, my hands resting on either side, my head bent as the blinding of tears finally came.
‘Don’t go.’ His hands were suddenly warm, resting on mine.
‘I must,’ I said, quickly. ‘Matron–’ But his hands tightened, extinguishing the lie.
‘I should have found the courage before,’ he said.
‘Courage?’ I looked up at him.
‘To beg you to come
with me. To Eden.’
I pulled myself free. I should have played outraged virtue and fled, knowing his dignity would not allow him to chase me through the hospital for all to see. But instead, like a fool, I wavered. ‘I can’t,’ I muttered, feebly.
‘Now I’ve offended you.’
‘No.’
I saw him flush slightly. ‘I didn’t mean – you must forgive me, I’m not accustomed … how could I have been so clumsy?’
His distress caught me off my guard. Before I could help myself, I smiled. And that was enough. He was at my side in a moment, my hands clasped once again in his. ‘I’m not very good at this. But I can’t let you go. Not like this. I love you. And I cannot face the thought of a life without you. And I thought, I hoped, and especially during these past few days…’
I murmured something, trying to pull myself free. But his grasp was firm. ‘No, please hear me out,’ he said. ‘What I am trying, in my poor clumsy way to say – to ask – is for you to marry me. To return with me as my wife. As mistress of Plas Eden.’
I shut my eyes. Every part of my being willed to say ‘yes’. To be with him forever.
‘I can’t,’ I whispered. ‘You don’t know me. You don’t know who I am.’
‘I know you,’ he replied, in a voice so gentle it nearly broke my heart. ‘I know all I ever need to know about you.’
I shook my head.
‘Then tell me.’
I looked at him. How could I tell him?
How could I tell him that I could not bear to watch the love die from his eyes and his face turn away from me? How could I tell him that it was not my life alone I was keeping safe in my silence? And that I might be careless of myself, but there was one I would kill to keep from harm, and that the hands that had thrust those coins so carefully deep into the safety of my pockets, and had given me life when all hope was lost, were ones I would never betray.
How could I tell him?
‘You don’t know me,’ I said. ‘You don’t know who I am, or what I have done. You don’t know what I am capable of. You don’t know me.’
And I fled, leaving him, and the kindness of his gift behind. I fled deep into the hospital, up to the tiny room I had once shared with Lily in those first days of my being there. To where I knew he would not follow.
I never saw Mr Meredith again.
Or, at least, that is where my story should have ended. But I was not born for virtue or willing self-sacrifice. I was not born to let go when there was one, last, desperate hope still whispering there in my heart.
Besides, hadn’t I been told often enough already that I would not, under any circumstances, be joining my Uncle Jolyon in Paradise? One more transgression hardly seemed to make a difference to my fate. And when I occasionally made my way to the back of the congregation of St Catherine’s, where the staff and more able-bodied patients of the hospital worshipped each Sunday, the Reverend Peters seemed to speak with a less mean-spirited creator.
So later that day, as the dark curled around the hospital and rain dashed itself against my windows, I pulled on the battered old coat I had arrived in, a lifetime ago – or so it seemed – and made my way out silently into the night.
Chapter Ten
A burst of laughter echoed around the Plas Eden terrace, drifting outwards over the still expanse of lake.
Rhiannon turned back from the water’s edge, where an overexcited Hodge was engaged in saving his squeaky from a faintly outraged audience of ducks, with a good deal of splashing and barking.
‘It feels good to have life back in poor old Eden, once more,’ she said to Carys, who was watching Hodge’s confrontation with a particularly large mallard that was clearly under the impression the squeaky was a duck’s lunch, and nothing whatsoever to do with a dog at all.
‘So it does,’ she replied, returning Rhiannon’s smile.
Carys and her mother had arrived shortly after Gwynfor Humphries, fresh from his history day in the Boadicea. He had been press-ganged into the occasion by Rhiannon with the irresistible promise of yet more old photographs of Plas Eden.
Mair had been a little nervous of venturing out onto the uneven gravel and into the heat of the sun. But, with a little encouragement from Gwynfor (who had a way with elderly ladies) she stepped out determinedly, one arm supported by the professor, walking stick tapping on the stones, to be installed in a comfortable armchair set up beneath the shade of a parasol.
‘Here’s Huw,’ said Rhiannon, at the heavy crunch of wheels on gravel. ‘I knew he wouldn’t be long.’
Moments later, a grey-suited Huw made his way across the lawn to join them, his wife following rather breathlessly in the wake of his rapid stride.
‘Hello Carys,’ he said, in a stilted tone, shaking her hand in his best management-lunch-with-networking manner. ‘You know Angela, don’t you?’
‘A little,’ replied Carys.
Angela, however, had none of the formality of her husband. Round-faced and pretty, with a mass of short blonde curls, she kissed Carys firmly on both cheeks. ‘Nice to see you again, Carys. What a lovely top.’
‘Thank you.’ Carys beamed at her. After a few passing meetings in Pont-ar-Eden High Street, she had not been quite sure what Huw might have told Angela. But Angela, who was a Harlech girl – and so beyond the gossip of back-of-beyond Talarn, let alone Pont-ar-Eden – was quite clearly oblivious to any undercurrents to the visit.
‘David not back from his meeting, then?’ she was asking Rhiannon.
‘The train was delayed, I’m afraid. So he missed his connection.’
Angela clucked, gently. ‘Oh, what a pity. It’s so nice to have all the family together.’
‘He knows the London line always has delays,’ remarked Huw, frowning. ‘I don’t see why he didn’t take the car.’
‘Huw!’ Angela eyed him in exasperation.
Huw blinked at her. ‘What?’
‘Darling, I don’t think David finds it easy driving long distances. You know? After his accident?’
‘Oh,’ muttered Huw, flushing slightly. ‘I thought, after all that physiotherapy that driving wouldn’t be a problem any longer.’
‘You’re hopeless,’ said Angela, laughing with gentle affection. ‘Aren’t men just hopeless? Of course David isn’t going to say he still has trouble, or when he is in pain. But you can see it in his face when he gets tired. Just like you always carry on with your golf when your knee plays up and never say a thing. You two are as bad as each other you know.’
‘Hrmph,’ grunted Huw, who could bluster his way through the trickiest of board meetings, but clearly knew better than to argue now.
‘I’m sure he’ll be here soon,’ put in Rhiannon, with a quick glance towards Carys, who had turned back to watching the antics in the pond once more, face hidden. ‘It’s only a short drive from the station. Come and see Mair. She’s got some fascinating photographs of Plas Eden to show us. I think we might get her to join your group in the Boadicea yet, Angela.’
Angela shot off, with Huw following in a slightly awkward fashion, uncertain whether his duty was to follow his wife or engage in polite small talk with Carys. He settled down in a free chair at the table with a brief nod in the direction of Professor Humphries, safe in the knowledge that Angela, at least, would fill any awkward gaps in conversation. Within minutes, he found himself left in peace as Angela plunged headlong into discussions with Mair about the wonders of trawling the online census on the web from the comfort of a proper chair and a pot of tea at hand.
‘I hadn’t realised your grandfather had taken so many photographs of Plas Eden,’ said Rhiannon, as they followed slowly behind Huw.
‘No, I didn’t, either,’ Carys replied. ‘There are loads of them. I didn’t bring them all, just the ones I’ve managed to scan into the computer and copy. I can’t see any signs of negatives, so these must be the only copies. It would be horrible if anything happened to them.’
‘Well, I’m really looking forward to seeing them,
’ said Rhiannon, cheerfully. ‘Although, perhaps we ought to eat first. I’m sure Mair must be getting hungry.’ She cleared her throat. ‘And it’ll give David time to get here before we start properly on the photographs.’
‘Yes,’ murmured Carys, even though she did not believe this, any more than Rhiannon.
She had braced herself so much for this meeting. For the first conversation, the first time they had spent any time in each other’s company since that day amongst the statues. It seemed the hurt and wounded pride she had seen in his eyes each time they passed in the street still ran deep in David, even after all these years. Far too deep to do anything else than avoid her. She should have known. After all, hadn’t she spent at least half the past week trying to think of good reasons not to come with Mam to Plas Eden?
A sense of deep sadness enveloped her. It would have been good to have at least made peace. Especially now. For what was probably the last time she would ever come here.
Carys paused, looking out over the still expanse of lake, with the green of fields and hillsides beyond. If Eden was sold and Rhiannon gone, David would not come back to Pont-ar-Eden, she knew it. For all she knew, he could already be planning a future away from here. It could even be what the meeting in London was all about. He had years of managing Plas Eden under his belt, there must be plenty of careers in tourism and management that would open up to him. He might even go abroad. As far away as possible.
And as for herself – she frowned, trying to push the inevitable conclusions of the last few days to the back of her mind. Joe had already contacted an estate agent. The Chester flat would be on the market within days. This was reality facing her slap-bang in the face. Even with her savings, and the money they would get from the flat, she would struggle to afford the smallest of places on her own. If she tried to keep on at college, she’d have no chance at all. And anyhow, what was the point? The dream of the smallholding and the good life had been for her and Joe. For their future together.
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