Sowing Secrets

by Ashley, Trisha

  I hardly slept last night, what with everything circling my mind on an endless loop, but at least they have now taken the drip away and my head doesn’t spin when I sit up.

  Irrationally, I’m finding it hard to forgive Mal for not wanting the baby, as if he had somehow caused its loss: that’s about as sensible as blaming the heavy sacks of Happyhen I carried from the car boot.

  He has just been in to visit me again, still in Dr Jekyll Nice Guy mode, bearing a large card and a bouquet and being almost insufferably kind and forgiving. But now I’ve regained one or two of my faculties I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of the kindness stems from guilt; he even held my hand when I cried, something he usually finds so hideously embarrassing that it makes him cross.

  Then he started talking about our future as if the baby were the merest unfortunate blip on the even line of our lives together.

  ‘I’ve been thinking things over while you’ve been in here, Fran, and things are going to change. For one thing, I’ve realised what a financial hole I’ve got into—and I’m going to sort it out! For a start, I’m going to sell the car before I go out to Grand Cayman.’

  ‘Go to Grand Cayman?’ I echoed blankly, for without really thinking it through I’d sort of assumed that he would turn the job down now. ‘But, Mal, it’s the week after next!’

  ‘I know, but I accepted the job and I can’t let them down—and the doctor assures me you will be as right as rain in a few days.’

  ‘But, Mal…’ I said again, but my voice was sounding a bit whiny so I shut up.

  He took my pale hand in his and squeezed it, but I just let it lie limp: it didn’t feel like it belonged to me anyway.

  ‘Look, I wouldn’t leave you at a time like this if I didn’t have to, but I’m doing it for us. With what they are paying me I can clear off any outstanding loans and we can make a fresh start when I get back. I might remortgage the house at a lower rate too, and I’m even thinking about selling Cayman Blue and buying a smaller, one-man boat!’

  ‘Couldn’t you do all that anyway, so you didn’t have to go, Mal?’

  ‘I’m thinking about what is best for our future, that’s all,’ he said, shifting uncomfortably and avoiding eye contact. ‘You can come out for two or three weeks once I’m settled, darling, and I’ll make everything up to you: it’ll be the holiday of a lifetime. Grand Cayman’s a tropical paradise, with coral beaches and palm trees.’

  He sounded like a travel brochure.

  ‘It would cost a lot of money for me to go out there, you said so before,’ I whispered from behind the sheet of invisible glass that seemed to have come down between the world and me. It didn’t seem important, anyway, because no prize was big enough to fill the aching void within me. When all the colour has leached away from your world, even tropical islands lose their magic. Someone was droning out an old blues song like a dirge, but it took me a few minutes to realise it was me.

  ‘It’s nice to hear you singing again—you must be feeling better!’ Mal smiled, relieved.

  ‘That’s not what you usually say,’ I pointed out weakly.

  ‘Well, I’m saying it now—and it won’t cost much for the air fare out to the Caribbean if we pick the right month, and it’ll be like a second honeymoon. Don’t worry about coping while I am away, either, because I’ll transfer money into our joint household account every month just as usual, and I can negotiate the remortgage over the Internet. And,’ he added, as though it was an extra and very lavish present, ‘I know you don’t like credit cards, but you need something for emergencies, so I’m getting you a gilt credit card on my account. It’ll come in handy for the holiday too.’

  ‘A credit card? But, Mal, I really don’t want one!’ I objected automatically, because the thought frightens me. I mean, if I don’t have the money in the bank then I don’t spend it: that seems to work OK for me.

  ‘You never know what might come up, or what you’ll need for the holiday—it’s going to be hot, for a start, and you’ll need cool clothes. Look, I’ve brought you these.’ And he laid a bundle of Cayman Island brochures and a guidebook on my bed.

  I lose a baby and he’s so pleased he vows to sell his toys and gives me a credit card with a huge spending limit and the promise of an exotic holiday? Or is it all just guilt for leaving me alone at a time like this?

  ‘Grand Cayman is a tropical paradise,’ he said dreamily, looking at the cover on one of the brochures.

  ‘We had Paradise,’ I whispered, but he didn’t seem to hear me. Proust got it right when he said the true paradises are the ones you have lost…and it was a long time since Mal had looked at me like that. Hot tears were rolling down my face again, but he was now gazing inwards at some wonderful vision.

  ‘Palm trees, coral beaches, lagoons…lots of sailing. I’ll show you the website when we get back home.’

  ‘I want my mother,’ I said weakly, childishly, but I don’t think he heard me, he’d gone into the Cayman blue again.

  Maybe he did hear me after all, for the next day Ma turned up bright and early and took practical measures to improve my surroundings, if not my state of mind.

  By using a sort of cheerful persistence she soon had me arrayed in white broderie anglaise with pink satin ribbon threaded through, all very girlie Victoriana, but, sickeningly, the sort of thing that actually suits me. There was a matching dressing gown and fluffy pink mules.

  ‘As soon as Mal finally told me what had happened, I rushed out and got them. If only I’d known, I’d have been here sooner, my little Frannie,’ she said affectionately, busily tidying the contents of my bedside cupboard and arranging a randomly selected bunch of flowers she had brought in an ugly vase so that it acquired an unexpected air of bizarre charm, like herself.

  ‘There,’ she said with satisfaction, ‘I told the girl in the flower shop I wanted one each of everything pink, and see how well it came out!’

  Once she had managed to infuse the clinical ambience with a hint of home she sat back, crossed her surprisingly slim ankles, folded her hands over her little fat stomach and said: ‘That Mal behaving himself? Apart from not telling anyone what was going on until last night, that is?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, tears coming to my eyes—but they seem to do that every five minutes at the moment, anyway. ‘That big card and the bouquet are from him.’

  ‘Huh!’ she said, unimpressed. ‘Well, clearly there’s more to him than I thought, so you can try for another baby when you’re well again, can’t you?’

  ‘Oh, no, I don’t think so…I mean, this wasn’t planned and I’m getting on a bit.’

  ‘Rubbish.’

  ‘No, you know I never intended having more children—Mal doesn’t really want any. Besides, Rosie’s enough for me,’ I said firmly. If I keep saying it enough, maybe I will believe it.

  ‘He’s a waste of space, that Mal, I’ve said so all along. If he hadn’t made you go on all these diets you probably wouldn’t be anaemic now.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s anything to do with it, Ma. And Mal just doesn’t like fat women…’

  I tailed off, looking at my plump but strangely attractive mother, thinking that if it weren’t for Mal, looking at the blueprint of what I might become wouldn’t bother me. Then suddenly I wondered what blueprint Rosie was following: she’s a changeling princess and might become anything.

  And I’d barely even thought about how she would be feeling about all this. What sort of mother was I? A tear squeezed painfully out and trickled down my face onto the pillow.

  ‘Let it out, my love,’ Ma said, handing me a tissue. ‘Better out than in.’

  She ferreted about in her huge, bulging handbag and produced a scrap of paper. ‘Now, I’ve left a message on your Uncle Joe’s answering machine, but he hasn’t replied yet, so it’s probably night over there, isn’t it? I expect we’ll hear from him later. And Auntie Beth says if you want to have a holiday in the Hebrides to recover you are very welcome, and Lachlan would drive down and t
ake you back up there with him. She’s writing. I’ll phone Rosie up later and break the news to her myself, and I’m going to stay at Fairy Glen and look after you until you are better, because I’m not going home until I see some roses in your cheeks.’

  ‘Yes but—’

  ‘I’ve got the dogs with me, and Boot is going to feed the cats and Oz.’

  Oz is the tortoise (Tortoz) and Boot is Vernon Bootridge, her gardener/handyman. Theoretically she has him three mornings a week, but actually he seems to have more or less taken up residence in the potting shed, a huge run-to-seed Mellors of a man. An unfortunate penchant for gardeners seems to run in the family.

  ‘I’m supposed to be showing people round Fairy Glen…tomorrow? Or the next day? I’ve lost count.’

  ‘Don’t you worry your head about it, my love. I’ll ring the estate agent on my mobile and sort it out.’

  ‘And the hens—can you make sure the hens are all right? Mal is probably feeding them, but he won’t be nice to them.’

  She patted my hand. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything. And it’s just as well you’ve got your old ma, because that Mal said he’s still going off jaunting to the Caribbean, leaving you on your own at the end of next week.’

  ‘It’s work, Ma, and he’s already accepted it,’ I said, weakly defensive. ‘I’m going out later for a holiday.’

  ‘He should take you with him if he’s going for so long. He can’t act like a single man just when it suits him.’

  I closed my eyes. Did she think I wasn’t worried, my handsome, restless husband on the loose in another Eden?

  Grapes of Wrath

  After Ma had gone I must have dozed off, for when I woke up the light was indefinably different in my corner of the little ward, with its swaying, snot-coloured chintz curtains.

  Mal’s mother was sitting on the very edge of the vinyl visitor’s chair with her clasp handbag dead centre on her bony lap and her dark eyes fixed on my face.

  ‘You’ve committed a great sin, and this is your punishment,’ she whispered when she saw I was awake, leaning over the bed in a wave of menthol and eucalyptus. ‘In the eyes of God you are living with a married man—but I’m sorry for your loss,’ she added perfunctorily, though with a tiny flicker of genuine emotion. ‘And this is no time to rake up old sins, especially with Mal off abroad soon and you weak as a kitten.’

  ‘Ma’s going to stay at Fairy Glen and look after things until I’m better,’ I said quickly, in case she was going to let Christian charity move her to look after me on my sickbed. ‘And I’m going out to see Mal.’

  ‘Well, Frances, he knows my opinion on your marriage, but even so I can’t condone his leaving you alone for so long. But he has been consumed by greed, avarice and lust and doesn’t listen to my advice.’

  ‘Lust?’ I said, startled.

  ‘The burning lust for earthly possessions.’ She primmed up her coldly righteous little prune of a face.

  ‘Oh…right. Yes, he does seem to want every new hi-tech gadget that comes on the market, and he’s always buying things for the boat, but he’s promised to change.’

  ‘What of Rosie?’

  ‘He doesn’t buy her anything at all.’

  ‘No, Frances, I meant has she been told that you are in hospital?’

  ‘Ma is ringing her up and trying to persuade her not to come home until the end of term. Although I’d love to see her, I don’t want to interrupt her studies, and I’m all right really.’

  I lay back again and closed my eyes, hoping when I opened them that I would find Mrs M. had been a horrible dream.

  But after a short inward struggle I opened them and managed to say, ‘It was kind of you to come, Mrs Morgan. I really appreciate it.’

  ‘Kindness doesn’t enter into it, Frances. I hope I am a Christian!’ she said, and, handing me a small booklet called ‘Roads to Redemption’ and a damp bag of hard green grapes, she hauled herself upright and tottered off in her sensible glacé leather shoes.

  Nia only came in once, but that was a big concession since she hates hospitals. She was carrying a potted miniature pink rose and a box of Liquorice Allsorts, and trailed Rhodri behind her like a grateful stray who had unexpectedly latched on to a good owner and couldn’t believe his luck; if he’d had a tail he’d have wagged it.

  Although I was glad to see his familiar face, it meant I couldn’t do more than exchange a few hasty private words with Nia when we sent him away to buy chocolate. But she has never been the maternal type, so although sympathetic she was also down to earth, pointing out that had I had the baby I would have become one of those exhausted geriatric mothers who totter dazedly through the daily treadmill with glazed, hopeless eyes, their clothes covered in food stains and baby vomit and their hair unbrushed.

  ‘You’re not Superwoman material, Fran. Remember all those broken nights when you had Rosie? Think what that would be like now, when you’re twenty years older!’

  ‘That’s true, I hadn’t thought of that,’ I admitted. ‘I’m horribly ratty and drained if I don’t get a full night’s sleep—and could you imagine Mal getting up in the middle of the night to feed a baby, even if he happened to be home?’

  ‘No,’ she said positively, and changed the subject to one that was clearly occupying most of her mind: her last-ditch attempt to persuade poor Rhodri to make an offer for Fairy Glen. She sees the ‘For Sale’ board as a Sword of Damocles poised to part it for ever from the rest of the Plas Gwyn estate and, more importantly, prevent her from doing whatever it is she does up at the standing stones.

  ‘Now your ma’s down for a bit he could at least go and discuss it with her,’ she said obstinately.

  ‘But he’s struggling to find the money to get Plas Gwyn up and running as it is,’ I pointed out. ‘Look how hard he’s working, doing all the unskilled stuff. I’d love him to buy it too, but I can see it’s impossible, even if Ma let him have the glen separately and sold the cottage to someone else. And I’m going to miss being able to go there for inspiration as much as you will.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said, with one of her fierce frowns, and it is true that I don’t perhaps use the standing stones in the way she does, but clearly she had come up against the rock of one of Rhodri’s occasional fits of obstinacy.

  She frowned. ‘Tonight at eight it’s the last of the present series of Restoration Gardener and if Plas Gwyn does get shortlisted we will have a huge amount more visitors so I’m sure Rhodri could buy the glen. It would be an investment.’

  ‘Oh, Nia, I’d entirely forgotten the programme was tonight!’

  ‘Well, it’s hardly surprising, is it? Don’t worry, we will record it for you and I’ll let you know immediately if Plas Gwyn gets through to the next stage. I’m feeling a bit more optimistic because Gabe Weston seems so keen on it—did I tell you that he rang up and—no, that’s right, Rhodri only heard on Monday, so I never got the chance. He found one or two interesting things in the documents Rhodri sent him that he’d like to check out, and also he’s dying to look at the maze, so—’ she looked at her watch—‘he should be turning up at Plas Gwyn any time now.’

  ‘Now? Today? But, Nia, if he’s coming back, what on earth is Rhodri doing here? He should be there to meet him this time!’

  And I really, really didn’t like the thought of Gabe Weston invading my Eden again…

  ‘It’s all right, he’s delegated Dottie to hold the fort again, but just until he gets back.’

  ‘But she’s crackers! She nearly blew it last time.’

  ‘She’ll be all right—and we got on the long-list, didn’t we? Gabe Weston chose that and he gets to pick the final three properties for the vote-off too, so you never know.’

  ‘Rhodri should be up there going all out to persuade him, not down here!’

  She shrugged. ‘He insisted he’d rather come and visit you, and you know what he’s like once he actually makes his mind up about something.’

  ‘He’s so sweet, but
I wouldn’t have minded, and they are letting me go home tomorrow so he could see me any time.’

  ‘Mal doesn’t exactly make him welcome, Fran! I think he’d rather see you here.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose now Mal’s got the crazy idea that Rhodri might be Rosie’s father, it’s best they don’t meet.’

  Rhodri came back carrying the unwanted chocolate and looking large, chunky, wholesome and masculine. The women in the other beds on the ward fell silent as he passed them, only to resume what they were saying after he’d passed.

  ‘I’ve told her about the Weston man coming again,’ Nia said. ‘And about you still refusing to buy the glen!’

  He opened his light-blue eyes wide. ‘But, Nia, I can’t! You know how I’m fixed financially, especially after Zoe’s wedding, but you can walk all over the rest of the estate any time you like, including the maze.’

  ‘I already do, but I also need access to those oak woods and the falls, and especially the standing stones,’ Nia said obstinately.

  ‘Why?’ asked Rhodri curiously, the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ I said faintly, closing my eyes. I only hope she isn’t performing anything involving sacrifice, or Rhodri could be doing an Aslan any time now.

  ‘I’m a Druid, that’s all,’ Nia said shortly. ‘There’s no big mystery about it.’

  ‘Are you?’ Rhodri said with mild interest. ‘Poetry and folk music and stuff?’

  ‘You inbred chinless wonder!’ Nia said scathingly. ‘You can hardly think I go up there to skip round the stones while reciting rhyming couplets!’

  ‘Well, that’s more or less what you do at the May Day ceremony at the maze with the others, isn’t it?’ he pointed out reasonably, grinning. ‘I’ve got a bird’s-eye view from my bedroom window.’

  ‘Oh?’ Her brow furrowed, so she looked pretty fierce. ‘You can’t see the standing stones from there, can you?’

  ‘Not really, even in winter when there are no leaves on the oak trees the canopy of branches is pretty dense. Why, you’re not doing all that nude dancing by the light of the moon thing, are you?’ he asked interestedly.