Sowing Secrets

by Ashley, Trisha

  Presumably so did I.

  I firmly banished the memory and got back down to the practicalities of the here and now. ‘Mal seems more inclined to love me as I was rather than as I am, so I’ll have to give dieting a go, and since he’s away for six weeks I should be able to lose a few pounds before he comes back. So, what sort of diet should I do? What about one of those meal-replacement things, then I wouldn’t have to cook anything tempting?’

  ‘Well, there’s the Shaker diet and the Bar diet, those are easy. But I’m warning you from bitter experience that even if you lose weight on one of those, you always put it straight back on again, plus an extra bit more.’

  ‘I wondered about that. But they must work for some people, mustn’t they? I’ll have to try it in the interests of my sex life, but it’s a pity I can’t just slide into comfortable middle age and be loved anyway. Thank God he hasn’t noticed my hair yet.’

  What is it with men and long hair? I mean, Mal might love mine but I was beginning to feel like Cousin Itt from The Addams Family, so I’ve had to resort to getting Carrie to lop two inches off the end whenever he is away.

  The shorter it gets the curlier it goes, so all that weight must have been pulling it down. It was certainly starting to pull me down.

  ‘There has to come a point when he will notice,’ Nia said. ‘What then?’

  ‘I’ll cross that hurdle when I come to it, preferably after I’ve lost my excess baggage. God, the things I do for love!’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to borrow Fat Is a Feminist Issue, instead?’ she offered.

  ‘No, because I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it for Mal. Well, I suppose I am doing it a bit for me, because Rosie says I look plump and cosy like Ma, and I don’t feel quite ready for that.’

  ‘You’re nowhere near as plump as your mam,’ Nia said. ‘And at least your boobs are still in the right place. Mine are heading south, and so is my bum.’

  ‘Now who’s exaggerating? You look fine to me! If you want to talk Major Slump you should see the Weevil woman next door in her pyjamas.’

  ‘Mona Wevill? I think I’d rather not; she looks bad enough clothed. What about this news you said you had? I’ve got some myself, but you start.’

  ‘I suppose mine’s a mixture of good and bad—and I’m not entirely sure which bit’s which. Christmas was a bit of a roller coaster, because first of all I finally had to tell Rosie all about her real father—or everything I know, which isn’t much, let’s face it—and she wasn’t terribly convinced. Ma’s been filling her head with the idea it was Tom Collinge…but I think she believed me in the end about the itinerant gardener.’

  ‘She’ll get over it. If she asks me I’ll tell her it’s true,’ Nia said. ‘Well, true that there was an itinerant gardener, anyway, because if you don’t know whether she’s Tom’s or not, I certainly don’t. Was that it, or is there more?’

  ‘More. Mal created a website for me as a surprise Christmas present,’ I said, ‘all about my artwork and…but that’s not important. I can show it to you next time you’re round. The thing is, I’ve now got an email address and Tom spotted the site and sent me an email!’

  ‘What? You don’t mean Tom Collinge, Rosie’s probably-not father?’

  ‘Yes! Just to say hi, and how was I, and that he’s got friends up here so perhaps he might drop in some time!’

  She thought about it. ‘I suppose once you are on the Internet you are accessible to anyone who wants to look you up, and he sounds like he’s just being friendly and maybe a bit curious. You can discourage him gently.’

  ‘I can’t discourage him at all, because I deleted the email before Rosie or Mal saw it, and I’ve mislaid the printout.’

  ‘Then he’ll either contact you again and you can be politely chilly, or he’ll think you are a different Fran March and that will be that…and why are you humming “Surfin’ USA”?’

  ‘What? Oh, probably because Tom said he taught surfing.’

  ‘Surfing?’

  ‘Yes, sorry, I thought I’d said. He teaches art and surfing in Cornwall.’

  ‘Are you sure? It sounds an odd mixture.’

  ‘Almost sure…’ I frowned. ‘But it’s not important, like the other thing I was going to tell you, which is truly shattering: Ma’s decided she’s getting a bit past all the driving and so she’s decided to sell Fairy Glen.’

  Nia froze with her glass suspended halfway to her lips, a fetching fuzz of froth adorning her upper lip.

  ‘Sell the glen? Do you mean just the cottage, or the whole thing?’

  ‘That’s what I said, but it’s the whole thing, of course.’

  ‘But she can’t! I mean, she’s had it since before you were born!’

  ‘She hasn’t actually done much to it, though,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s pretty basic, and she’s left the glen to run wild. And, if she’s going to sell one of her houses, she’s more comfortable in Cheshire with all her friends. She’s going to use some of the proceeds to go on a world cruise.’

  ‘She could give the Glen to you!’

  ‘But Mal and I have got a house already, a very nice house—and I’d like her to have fun with the money, go on a cruise or whatever she wants.’

  ‘Has she really thought about this? She does realise that she can’t come and stay with you and bring the dogs when Mal’s home? He’d vacuum them to death.’

  ‘I know, Rosie’s old dog had so many baths she used to hide at the sound of a tap running. But Ma could come when he was away, and I could go over to visit her. I mean, I don’t like the idea of this any more than you, Nia, but things have to change, I can see that.’

  Nia’s frown cleared a little. ‘The cottage is so rundown, it’s not exactly weekender material, is it? Maybe it won’t sell.’

  ‘Perhaps not, or it may not be worth much, because although there’s lots of land it’s mostly vertical, and the cottage is tiny really—it’s the opposite of the Tardis, because the outside looks much bigger than the inside. I’m going to arrange to have it valued for her, anyway, so we will see.’

  ‘If it won’t fetch much money she might change her mind,’ she said hopefully.

  ‘You know Ma once she makes her mind up about anything…but I’m certainly going to miss walking in the fairy glen once it’s sold.’

  ‘Me too, and I need access to the standing stones,’ Nia agreed, looking darkly brooding (not unusual; she often does), but she didn’t say why.

  ‘What’s your news?’ I asked to distract her, and she scowled.

  ‘The bad news is, my planning application for the workshop’s been turned down.’

  ‘Oh, Nia, I’m sorry!’

  Nia had taken over her old home now her parents had retired to Llandudno, and since her return had been making her exquisite porcelain jewellery in the old outhouse behind the cottage, while she waited for planning permission to rebuild it as a small studio. But now the new owners of the adjoining property had put in objections to the plans.

  ‘English weekenders!’ she snarled angrily, with the sort of expression that should have told her neighbours to head for the border, fast. ‘Here half a dozen times a year, contribute nothing to the village, think they own the place!’

  Most fortunately, she has ceased to be—and now denies she ever was—one of the Daughters of Glendower, keeping the home fires burning in the weekenders’ cottages, or it might have been a case of ‘frying tonight’.

  Sometimes I wonder if Fairy Glen only escaped because Ma is half Welsh and it would be terribly difficult just to burn half of a house (though it is a miracle that Ma herself has not set fire to the whole place with carelessly discarded fag ends by now).

  ‘Have you tried talking to your neighbours about your plans for the pottery,’ I suggested to Nia, ‘as opposed to just glowering over the wall at them?’

  Nia does a good Frida Kahlo glower, due to having those thick straight eyebrows that meet in the middle when she frowns. ‘I mean, they might see your point of view
if you explained.’

  ‘I did speak to them. They said they didn’t want to have drinks in the garden to a background thump of me wedging clay, and in any case I was a health hazard!’

  ‘You’ll have to find a workshop nearby if you can’t get planning permission. I’m sure there must be somewhere.’

  ‘Rhodri’s back again,’ she said, seemingly at random. ‘That’s the good news. And do you know you’re singing “There’s a Place for Us”?’

  I hadn’t, but I stopped. ‘Rhodri? Have you seen him?’

  ‘No, Carrie told me—he’d been into Teapots to buy honey and a bag of doughnuts, and stayed for coffee and a chat. His divorce is going through and his ex-wife’s got the Surrey house, the London flat and seemingly most of the money. And she’s got a rich French count in tow too. I think poor old Rhodri’s number was up once he went from Lloyd’s Name to Lloyd’s loser.’

  ‘Oh, no, poor Rhodri! He always was weak as water when it came to the crunch. What’s he going to do? Hasn’t he already lost most of his money?’

  ‘Yes, and now he’s losing most of what he’s got left. But he says it’s a clean-break divorce so he won’t have to pay maintenance, and the daughter’s sort of a model-cum-socialite engaged to someone wealthy and nearly off his hands. So now he’s going to live permanently at Plas Gwyn, and Carrie says he’s thinking of opening it up all season to the public instead of just summer Sundays, to make some money. And he might hire the Great Hall out for weddings and stuff like that. She said he had lots of ideas.’

  ‘It will be lovely to have him back living in St Ceridwen’s, but I don’t think making money is his forte,’ I said doubtfully. Rhodri had been a handsome boy, but even then an air of sweet bewilderment had lurked behind his hopeful, trusting blue eyes, and the few times we’d met since I’d been married to Mal he hadn’t seemed much different.

  ‘No, it certainly isn’t. But I thought I might go up to Plas Gwyn and talk to him, now there’s no chance of running into that vile, stuck-up bitch he married, because there’s the whole stable wing doing nothing, and he could turn it into little craft workshops and studios as an extra tourist attraction—and rent one to me!’

  ‘Brilliant!’ I said, and brilliant it might prove to be for Rhodri too, for if Nia was one thing it was bossy, and if he looked pathetic enough she might just supply the backbone he needed to get Plas Gwyn off the ground as a paying proposition.

  She needed some outlet for her powerful energy in addition to beating the hell out of lumps of clay, and possibly, if they pushed her too far, the neighbours. And it might even distract her from whatever strange rites I had twice caught her performing up at the ancient stones above the fairy glen, which I sincerely hoped were merely some form of Druidism or Wicca, and not something much more sinister. She can be so intense at times!

  ‘Do you want another glass of delicious water?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve got a better idea—I’ve got pizza, home-made wine and some whisky at home, so why don’t we go and have a girls’ night in? Maybe watch a DVD?’

  ‘OK. Shall I give Carrie a ring and see if she wants to come round too?’

  ‘Is that greed talking?’ I said, because Carrie never comes visiting without bringing a selection of the home-made goodies she bakes for her café, Teapots.

  Nia, already dialling, pulled a face at me over her mobile phone.

  Sex, Lies and Videotape

  It felt wonderfully decadent with the three of us curled up on the big sofa in front of the TV, the coffee table groaning under the weight of pizza, leftover birthday cake and all the pastries Carrie had brought, scattering crumbs and drinking my home-made apple wine and Carrie’s mead.

  Mal would have gone ballistic if he’d seen what we’d done to his immaculate living room.

  We watched the news as an entrée, then Nia started going through my sparse collection of DVDs to find a film to watch as the main course.

  ‘Ten Things I Hate About You?’ I suggested, and the other two groaned.

  ‘We must have seen that a dozen times!’ Carrie complained.

  ‘Yes, but it’s my favourite film.’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t let me get my favourite film,’ Nia objected. She may not have a DVD player but she usually carries Fargo round with her like a teenager with a new CD.

  ‘Too gory,’ I objected. I wanted something lighter.

  ‘What’s this?’ Nia asked, holding up an unfamiliar box.

  Carrie reached over and took it. ‘Restoration Gardener?’

  ‘I’d forgotten I had that; Ma won it, but I haven’t watched it yet. It’s only a short one—the highlights of some TV series.’

  ‘I’ve heard of it—I think its sort of archaeology crossed with gardening. Let’s have a look at that first,’ Carrie suggested, ‘then decide on a film.’

  ‘OK, at least we haven’t already seen it a million times,’ Nia agreed, putting it in the machine.

  We all replenished our plates and glasses, then started the DVD and sat back expectantly. Carrie’s a keen gardener, I’m passionate about roses and Nia loves flowers generally, so hopefully there should be something there to suit us all.

  To the accompaniment of a gentle ripple of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, the title Restoration Gardener wrote itself across the screen with a quill pen over some speeded-up computer-generated images of a Japanese crystal garden growing like iced mould out of bare paper.

  Carrie settled back with a plate containing a custard tart, a cherry-topped coconut pyramid and two cream-filled brandy snaps (and that was just for starters). ‘I do love gardening programmes—it’s such a shame we can’t get more channels on the TV in St Ceridwen’s.’

  ‘It’s a shame we can’t always see the ones we do allegedly get,’ Nia said, scattering shards of meringue. ‘The reception’s so bad they should be ashamed of charging us for the TV licence, and only a masochist would bother looking in the newspaper at what’s on everywhere else.’

  ‘Do you think Gabriel Weston is his real name?’ I asked, as the quill pen reappeared and wrote it with a flourish. ‘It’s a bit olde worlde and earthy, isn’t it?’

  ‘You don’t get much more earthy and olde worlde than Bob Flowerdew,’ pointed out Nia, ‘and that’s his real name.’

  ‘Gabriel is his real name!’ Carrie exclaimed, striking herself on the forehead with the hand holding the remains of the coconut pyramid, so that it was suddenly like being inside a snowglobe (though the custard tart would have been much, much worse). ‘Am I stupid, or what? I read all about him in a magazine last time I went to the hairdresser’s in Llandudno. He’s usually called Gabe, though.’

  ‘It’s starting,’ Nia warned, and we stopped brushing bits of coconut off each other and turned to face the screen.

  Helicopter-borne, the camera homed slowly in on a small Tudor manor house sitting inoffensively among a rolling, sheep-nibbled expanse of grass, with here and there a flight of stone steps or a section of herringbone-brick pathway.

  There wasn’t much more garden left there than around Rhodri’s mini-mansion, Plas Gwyn, I thought, taking a bite of Bakewell tart and settling back. All Rhodri’s old gardener, Aled, had to do was drive round and round on his little sit-on mower and indulge his passion for clipping trees into strangely rude shapes.

  ‘Approaching Slimbourne Manor you might think that there never was a garden here at all, or if there ever was, that all trace had vanished,’ said a warm, deep voice with just the faintest, tantalising hint of a West Country burr.

  A strange shiver ran down my back and I sat up and stared at the screen. I’d definitely heard that voice before somewhere, I was sure of it—maybe on some other gardening programme. It certainly wasn’t one you’d ever forget, with a mellow tone that made you think of dark, rich honey and folded tawny velvet…of a pint of best bitter with the sunlight shining through it, or the dappled gold-browns of a peaty stream bed, or…well, you get the idea. Even if the programme was no good I could see how the a
udience was hooked. I was half-mesmerised myself.

  ‘Yet, as we get closer,’ the velvety voice continued, ‘we start to notice clues: grand steps that once led somewhere and the remains of beautiful old brick pathways. The grass at the front of the house that looked so flat from high above, from an angle shows the bumps and hollows of a long-vanished knot garden. Slimbourne was once a jewel in a beautiful setting, and we are going to resurrect it!’

  ‘I don’t see how he can see anything there,’ I said sceptically, trying to shake off the near-hypnosis of that voice. ‘Perhaps he just makes it up.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Carrie, suddenly our instant resident expert, ‘apparently he has an absolute gift for garden design, a huge knowledge of the history of old gardens and a degree in archaeology! And, what’s more, he looked totally hunky in his photo.’

  ‘I don’t think people say “hunky” any more,’ observed Nia. ‘They say a man is “fit” or “well fit”.’

  ‘Then he looked well fit. More than well fit. Well fit with knobs on.’

  ‘I should hope so,’ I said, watching critically as Gabe Weston slowly approached us on the screen, escorting a tall and ancient lady dressed in mottled tweed trousers and an old cricket jumper, her long string of pearls trapped under one pendulous breast.

  I jerked upright as though someone had run their finger down my spine, the half-eaten cake in one hand.

  ‘I’m lucky in having the assistance of Lady Eleanor Arkleforth, the owner of this lovely house, who has already researched the garden thoroughly in the family archives.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Lady Arkleforth said graciously. ‘I’m delighted to restore the grounds to some semblance of what they once were at last.’

  ‘I believe you’ve found a plan of how the garden looked originally?’ Gabe Weston prompted.

  The camera finally fully focused on the gardener’s highly unusual face, but I could still see it clearly even when it moved on to the garden plan, because his image seemed to have been flash-burned into my retinas.