‘Oh,’ said Carys, this being the only tactful thing she could think of to say. Now, she felt, was not the time to point out that the Merediths could hardly be classed amongst the poor, and there was always someone, somewhere in the world, in need of help.
David rowed on in silence, apparently lost in thought. Carys turned her face away, as if absorbed herself in the bound of startled rabbits in the fields alongside the water’s edge, and the distant rise of mountains behind.
Freed from the need to keep up a cheerful face in front of Mam, she could feel the hollowness opening up inside. Her mind, after its first rage and grief at the split with Joe, seemed to have gone numb. She had been through it over and over again so many times, her body wide-awake and crackling with betrayal at four o’clock each morning, however early or late she went to bed. She hadn’t even the energy to be angry any more.
Tylers had returned an attachment of the job description and application form within minutes of her sending her email. She had made a start, even though her heart wasn’t in it. With the flat already on the market and Mam showing signs of getting stronger, she had no choice. With so many people out there who’d die for such a chance, she could hardly complain. But it still felt like a step backwards. As if she had wasted so many years and left it too late even to aspire to the life she really wanted.
‘Won’t you miss this?’ she said, abruptly. ‘If it’s sold, I mean. I can see why Huw might want you to get rid of it, but Eden’s always been your life.’ David’s oar missed a stroke. He swore softly under his breath. ‘I’m sorry.’ Immediately she was contrite. ‘I didn’t mean to pry, and it’s none of my business. I just can’t imagine you without Plas Eden, that’s all.’
‘I might surprise you.’
Now she had offended him. Bloody men. Fragile egos, the lot of them. Why on earth did she bother? Carys took a deep breath. Her head had begun to ache with lack of sleep and if he was under the illusion she was nice, sweet, understanding Carys of years ago, he had another think coming. ‘I didn’t say it was some kind of failure,’ she returned, trying not to sound irritable. ‘Just that it seems a pity. Not many people have a chance to make a place like this their life’s work.’ She gave what she hoped was a suitably placating smile. ‘And be their very own lord of the manor.’
‘You make me sound like some medieval robber baron.’
‘Well, that’s probably how your family got the land in the first place, isn’t it?’ she retorted.
He turned to her. ‘Still with that chip on your shoulder?’
‘I do not have a chip on my shoulder. That’s the way the world works, hadn’t you noticed?’ Even in her own ears she sounded bitter. ‘At least the Merediths ended up with a sense of responsibility,’ she added, deliberately softening her tone. She didn’t want to fight with David. They had parted all those years ago with so much left unsaid: there was no point in arguing now. ‘I just meant that at least here you are in charge of your own destiny. It’s not like that when you’re working for an organisation. However high you climb, you are still working for somebody else. Here you can choose what you do. Within reason,’ she added, as he appeared about to dispute this fact. ‘Anyhow, as I said, it’s none of my business.’
David rowed on in silence, his face hidden so that she couldn’t make out his expression. Which was fine by her. This was beginning to feel like one big mistake. She should have insisted on the estate agent and avoided having anything to do with the Merediths at all. They’d only brought her heartache, last time around. Why have anything more to do with them now?
Carys returned to watching the fields and the mountains once more, blinking unexpected tears from her eyes. She was being unfair, she knew it. It wasn’t David’s fault she had messed up her life. He wasn’t responsible for her current problems. Her anger was with Joe, and with herself. At least she still had her health and her strength. Heaven knew what the prognosis was for a full recovery for David’s damaged leg. The last thing he needed was her sniping at him.
‘Wow, that looks pretty,’ she said in the friendliest tones she could muster as David expertly brought the boat alongside a rickety wooden jetty, definitely in need of repair. ‘I didn’t realise Eden Farm was so big.’
‘Not a mud hut for the servants, then,’ replied David, dryly.
She shot him an apologetic look. ‘Of course not.’
They set off along a well-worn path, Hodge racing in front of them. Eden Farm consisted of a traditional cottage of huge grey and brown stones under a dark slate roof. Yellow roses climbed up over the stones and around the small, square windows. On the reasonably flat ground between the cottage and the lake, before the ground swept up towards the mountains behind, neatly kept barns and greenhouses appeared, along with orderly beds containing the faded remains of vegetables and herbs, and a row of three large polytunnels.
‘That looks amazing,’ exclaimed Carys, who had finally worked out how to use Angela’s digital camera, and was busily photographing the outside of the cottage before the light went. ‘Your tenants must have done a lot of work.’
‘They did.’ David was watching Hodge, who was racing round in a state of mad-half-hour enthusiasm, with the odd hopeless dash towards instantly vanishing rabbit tails. ‘The Sullivans did miracles. It’s surprisingly sheltered, which I suppose is why the Estate’s kitchen gardens were put here in the first place.’
It was a strange feeling, thought Carys, to realise that this was, in some way, part of her. She could almost see the gardeners working their endless routine of ensuring there would be fruit and vegetables all year round for the family at Plas Eden and their guests. The polytunnels apart, it must have looked very like this when her grandfather had held the responsibility for feeding the big house, and even for his father before him. She could almost smell the autumn burning of leaves and the spring richness of freshly dug earth. It gave her a slight shiver in her spine to think of their eyes looking out on very much the same scene as she was seeing now.
‘Can we get into the kitchen garden?’ she asked, tentatively.
‘Yes, of course. Not that there’s much to see. We tend to keep it locked now there’s no one living in the cottage. Kids from the village don’t usually make it this far, but after that incident with the apple trees last month I’d rather not take any chances.’ David pulled a large, old-fashioned iron key from his pocket, and they made their way along a path of slate chippings to a painted wooden door.
‘Wow,’ breathed Carys, as they stepped through. A wilderness greeted them. An untamed wilderness of dock and grasses, surrounded by high stone walls, with a tantalising hint of distant apple trees and broken-down greenhouses between the jungle greenery. ‘The Sullivans didn’t start on this, then?’
He shook his head. ‘I know they pruned the fruit trees and a vine in one of the greenhouses, but I don’t think they did anything else. This was the next project.’
‘You could grow so much in here.’ Carys bent and parted the thick covering of couch grass. ‘I bet the soil is incredibly rich from all the care it must have had over the years.’ Nettles and docks stretched out on either side, leading to a rampant bank of raspberry canes. ‘It would need a hell of a lot of clearing, though.’
‘You’re telling me,’ said David, gloomily. The walled garden had drifted so far down the seemingly endless to-do list of the Eden estate, it had practically fallen off the bottom decades ago.
‘I bet it’s rabbit-proof, though.’ Carys was rapidly taking in every detail of the garden. ‘That wall looks pretty intact.’
‘There’s supposed to be a pineapple pit on the far side,’ David volunteered. ‘Where all those brambles are.’
‘Oh, so that’s where it is! Dad used to tell me about that.’ Carys sighed, wistfully. ‘He always said that was where they used to put in loads of manure to get the temperature right to grow pineapples, way before they had any other kind of heating. It was like a status symbol if you were posh,’ she added with a smile.
David bent down to pat Hodge, who had completed a quick investigation of every possible corner of the garden and in the absence of rabbits had returned to lean gently on his good leg, gently nudging a dog-biscuit pocket. ‘I’ve been thinking it would be only fair to keep the cottage for Rhiannon, whatever happens with the rest of the estate. She wouldn’t be able to cope with all the land, of course, but a couple of people from the village have been asking about allotments. Which might be a possibility.’
‘That sounds a brilliant idea,’ said Carys enthusiastically. ‘Allotments are amazingly popular. The ones in Chester have something like a five-year waiting list. And apparently that’s nothing, nowadays. I’m sure once a few started, plenty of others would join in.’ She hesitated. She wanted to say something nice, but it seemed whatever she said came out the wrong way. ‘I’m sure Rhiannon will appreciate not having to move completely away,’ she said, slightly awkwardly. ‘And having somewhere to come back to.’
‘Hrmph,’ he grunted, sounding like Huw. He gave Hodge an encouraging pat on his haunches and strode off towards the wooden door. ‘Come on, I’ll show you the house.’
Carys turned and looked back over the neglected wilderness of garden. She was glad she had made this visit. If nothing else, just seeing the places Dad and her grandfather had loved and worked in had told her that it had been real, that sudden passionate enthusiasm of hers for growing. That dream of a smallholding, at least, had not come out of nowhere, or been an excuse for going back to college, reliving her twenties and avoiding adult responsibilities. At least that had always been real.
She wasn’t sure if something like gardening could exactly pass down the genes, but the enthusiasm had been there, all around her, all her life. Dad might have stuck to his lines of regimented beans at the bottom of the garden at Willow Cottage, while Mam indulged her passion for roses and a cottage garden flow of colour around the borders, but it was the love of watching things grow that had brought Dad and Mam together in the first place, and, she suspected, kept their marriage solid, despite the differences in their ages.
Stuff Joe. If she was offered that management job at Tylers she would rent the cheapest place she could find and save like crazy until she could afford her own plot of land. She wouldn’t mind living in a caravan or a yurt until she had saved up for a house. Or even the prefabricated eco-build she had wanted all along, which Joe had scoffed as being hopelessly new-age hippy with off-grid power and compost toilets.
Well now she could have all the compost toilets she liked, thought Cary defiantly. And nobody could stop her.
Chapter Thirteen
Inside, Eden Cottage was quaint and old-fashioned with low beams and sash windows set deep within its thick, whitewashed walls. It was probably, Carys thought, still very much as it had been when her grandparents lived here.
As David and Hodge had disappeared to inspect guttering and check the outbuildings for signs of raves, dope-smoking dens and any other illicit goings-on, Carys was free to roam as she wished. She made her way through the house, Angela’s camera clicking away.
A neat little bathroom had been fitted into one of the rooms on the first floor, the roofs of the two remaining bedrooms sloping under the eaves. Downstairs, there was a large kitchen with a long, solid wooden table that looked as if it hadn’t moved in a hundred years or more.
The kitchen had been the centre of Eden Farm, Dad always said. Carys didn’t really remember her grandmother, and the only photographs were of a very old lady, small and wrinkled, but bright-eyed and beaming with pride as she held Nia in the family christening gown, with Gwenan and Carys on either side.
But Dad, especially as he grew older, had talked of a younger, vibrant woman. One whose kitchen always smelt of baking bread, and who kept a kettle permanently on the go on the range for the stream of visitors who filled the kitchen with conversation and laughter. Each Christmas, Dad said, the cottage had been stuffed to bursting with children as well as adults; even that time there was snow up to the lintel of the door and it was so cold half the village went skating on Eden lake.
The range had gone, replaced by a cream-coloured Aga, but the kitchen still had the feel of a place just waiting to be filled once more. David was right, thought Carys: this was a Rhiannon kind of place. All ready and waiting for life to come bursting through the doors.
From the kitchen, she made her way into a living room, with a huge inglenook fireplace set off to one side. This in turn opened out into a sunroom, not unlike the one at Plas Eden, although on a much smaller scale.
A key hung on a little hook to one side of the French windows. It turned easily in the lock, allowing her to step onto a small patio area overlooking the lake. In the distance, across the water, she could just catch a glimpse of Plas Eden.
Carys sighed wistfully. Over the hedge surrounding the cottage, she could make out the roof of the nearest polytunnel and the wall surrounding the kitchen garden. It was all very well being practical and resigning herself to working for Tylers fulltime for the next ten years or so. This was what she wanted to do. Right here, in front of her.
Plas Eden might be the Meredith’s family inheritance, but hadn’t her ancestors helped create the garden? Plus kept it flourishing for a hundred years or more. Probably as long as Plas Eden itself had existed, in fact. In the days before supermarkets and the freezer, Plas Eden couldn’t have survived without its kitchen garden to keep its inhabitants supplied with fresh fruit and vegetables all year round. No wonder the older inhabitants of Pont-ar-Eden felt themselves entitled to have a say: after all, if it hadn’t been for generations of Evans working away, the Merediths would have all died out from scurvy long ago. Not that she expected a Meredith to see things this way, and she was certainly too proud to beg. Especially where David Meredith was concerned.
But there was another option. From the nearest barn she heard the sharp buzz of a ring tone, quickly silenced, followed by the sound of David’s voice. She wasn’t looking for an inheritance or a stake in a grand house, but a business. One that she could start now, while Mam still needed looking after and that she could grow as Mam – hopefully – became more independent.
A business idea. Wasn’t that what Merlin had said he would support? A business idea that would help the village. If David was already looking at allotments, he might well be open to considering other ideas as well. A Victorian kitchen garden brought back to life and providing locally grown food to homes, hotels and restaurants could be just the kind of enterprise that Pont-ar-Eden needed, whatever might eventually happen to the house.
It would of course mean staying in Pont-ar-Eden for the next few years, if not more. Carys frowned to herself at the distant crunch of approaching footsteps over gravel. Her stomach gave a wobble: Devon and Cornwall had always been the destination of choice when she and Joe had been discussing a smallholding. Not that she was familiar with the south coast, but Joe had family in Taunton and hadn’t she spent half her life trying to get away from Wales?
Then there was David Meredith. Mam and Angela would no doubt be ordering wedding cakes and planning marquees and rose arches for Plas Eden’s grounds at the mere hint that she was staying.
But not if Plas Eden itself were sold. Anyhow, Carys told herself firmly, what did it matter? She was over David Meredith. She’d been over him a long time ago. The kamikaze stomach and the tingling all over her finger ends were just hormones. And hormones didn’t get you anywhere. They only brought heartache, and wasting years of your life with idiots like Joe who were only ever going to do what they wanted to do in the first place.
She was over David Meredi
th. She was over men in general, in fact. All she wanted now was to get on with creating a life for herself. And she could do that fine on her own, thank you very much. You didn’t even need a man to have children nowadays, if it came to that. It had been a storyline on The Archers, so even Mam must be aware of the possibility. From now on, she was going to live her own life, and no one could stop her.
‘That was Rhiannon,’ came David’s voice. Carys jumped. He was closer than she imagined. His eyes, she discovered, were scrutinising her face, almost as if he could read her thoughts.
‘It’s not Mam, is it?’
‘No, you’re okay. Mair’s fine. She’s just having a nap. Rhiannon was asking if we’re on our way back. It’ll be dark soon.’
‘Oh.’
He was still standing there, eyes on her face. She knew that look. It was David Meredith gearing himself up to say something. Heat shot through her, taking her by surprise and knocking the breath from her body. She didn’t want to know what he was going to say. She didn’t care. She was over David Meredith, and she didn’t want to give that treacherous heart of hers any excuse to think otherwise.
‘I’ll lock up, then.’ She turned briskly back towards the French windows. ‘This has been great. Thank you so much for bringing me.’ She sounded stiff and formal in her own ears, which was fine by her. ‘Mam will just love all these photos. They’ll bring back happy memories that she can keep forever.’ She could feel David still hesitating behind her. ‘I’ll meet you at the front door, shall I?’
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