Sowing Secrets

by Ashley, Trisha

  ‘Rhodri, I’m a Druid, not some New Age hippie-dippy witch!’

  Just as well, the way she was looking at him. ‘I think it’s really interesting, Nia, but let’s talk about it another time,’ I said weakly.

  ‘You’re getting tired,’ Rhodri said kindly. ‘Perhaps we’d better go.’

  They bickered off down the corridor together, Nia addressing him as ‘my Lord High and Mighty’, something she only does when cross with him, or remembering her socialist working-class roots or whatever, so clearly she was still miffed about the folk music bit.

  Left alone, I lay there feeling uncomfortable just knowing that Gabe Weston was in the village.

  ‘Mr Gwyn-Whatmire just asked me if we could put the Restoration Gardener programme on the ward TV tonight. It’s so exciting to have somewhere local on!’ one of the nurses said, stopping by my bed. ‘And that Gabe Weston is gorgeous!’

  ‘Isn’t he just,’ I murmured weakly. ‘But I’m sure everyone else would rather watch a soap.’

  ‘Oh, no, they’ll all be glued to it, you’ll see. And you should eat that chocolate,’ she added. ‘Full of iron, it is.’

  So I did, even though I wasn’t hungry: I couldn’t lie about there for ever like a dying duck.

  I don’t know what Rhodri thought I would do with the magazines he’d brought me: an old American Vogue, Fly-Fishers Monthly and Your Stately Home, but it was a kind thought…and even that made me burst into tears again.

  If there’d been a drought I could have hired myself out as a sprinkler.

  True to her word the nurse wheeled the TV into a central position at the end of the small ward and switched on Restoration Gardener, so that all those of us in a reasonably sentient condition could watch.

  In fact, when Gabe came on, one or two of the patients I’d thought totally out of it suddenly stirred and showed signs of life too. He certainly scrubbed up well: for the programme he was wearing a leather jacket over what looked like one of those supersoft cashmere jumpers, but he still gave the impression he knew which end of a spade was which.

  He also looked very familiar now, which was odd—but no odder than everything else happening to me lately, especially this feeling I was experiencing that I was levitating above my bed with my air-filled head bobbing about like a balloon.

  ‘Welcome to Restoration Gardener,’ he said, in his seductively deep furry voice, ‘the last of the series featuring the Old Mill, where the millrace and water gardens are now nearing completion. But just before we go there, I’m going to show you the six wonderful gardens, each worthy of restoration, that I’ve chosen my final three from—and amazingly difficult it was too!’

  With spaced-out detachment I watched as he showed us brief vignettes of each one of them, Plas Gwyn being the very last. The house looked lovely, even with Dottie bobbing about in the background like a demented scarecrow, and there were some artfully lit shots of the maze showing the bumps and hollows of the pattern.

  ‘Plas Gwyn in North Wales is an ancient house in a lovely setting, with a unique unicursal maze…’ he was saying. ‘I’ll tell you later which will go through to next week’s vote-off, when you get to choose our new restoration project! For now, though, let’s go down to Hampshire and see how the Old Mill is getting along…’

  The arrow-head smile that accompanied this seemed to be directed straight at me, bringing me back down to earth—or my hospital bed—with a bump. I couldn’t tell you much about the Old Mill because while it was on I was too busy coping with an emotional seesaw of wanting him to shortlist Plas Gwyn for Rhodri’s sake, yet fearing anything that might bring him one step closer to St Ceridwen’s Well and into my (and Rosie’s!) orbit.

  ‘That’s all from the Old Mill, though we will pop back in the next series to see how the project has developed,’ Gabe said finally. ‘Next week’s programme will be the last in the present season, but don’t forget to tune in and choose the winner of the next makeover. The three who have made it through are…’

  He paused tantalisingly, then said, ‘Edge Cottage in Devon with its walled apothecary garden, the fascinating grottoes and topiary of Wisham Hall in Gloucestershire and, finally—Plas Gwyn in North Wales with its unique ancient maze.’

  He looked full at the camera. ‘I know which one is my favourite—now you get ready to tell me yours!’ And with a final smile he vanished from the screen to be replaced by the credits.

  ‘There,’ the nurse said, ‘isn’t that wonderful? That will have made you feel so much better, Mrs March, knowing that your friend’s house is on the shortlist! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it won?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, a trifle hollowly. ‘Absolutely wonderful!’

  I tottered down to the phone later and called Nia and Rhodri, who were both wild with excitement, and then Carrie. After that, worn out with making enthusiastic and congratulatory noises about something that could well prove to be the oil slick on the, so far, fairly placid sea of my life, I thankfully climbed back into bed again.

  Apart from the occasional coachload of tourists nothing much happens in St Ceridwen’s Well (though I suppose that is all about to change), so next day when I arrived home from hospital several of my neighbours were hanging about outside their houses in a casual sort of way, ready to wave and call greetings. That was nice, but I could have done without the Wevills standing watching me from their doorstep, wreathed in more wholesome toothy smiles than an Osmond convention.

  After the heat of the hospital it felt very cold to me as Mal assisted me from the car, and I’d looked in the unforgiving hospital washroom mirror, so I knew it was my turn to look like a ‘Thriller’ zombie, all ashen face and dark-socketed eyes.

  I tottered on rubber legs towards the house, turning to give my watchers a rather Queen Mother salute before I went in, and just at that moment a familiar big silver Mercedes glided to a stop. The tinted window noiselessly slid down and for one interminable minute I gazed into a pair of concerned green-rayed hazel eyes. Then the window slid back up and the car moved almost silently on.

  It was disconcertingly like a slow-motion scene from a Mafia film, but without the machine guns; I even had Hendrix in my head singing ‘Hey Joe’ as the soundtrack.

  ‘Nosy bastard!’ Mal muttered, putting his arm round my waist and trying to hurry me over a doorstep that seemed to have suddenly grown to the size of the north face of the Eiger. ‘Looks like that TV gardener man—heard he was staying at the Druid’s Rest last night.’

  I didn’t say anything—in my present condition I was just grateful that I hadn’t hallucinated the little scene. In the house everything seemed unsettlingly unfamiliar, and even more clinical than the hospital. Mal’s way of showing his love, regret, and possibly guilt, had been to render the house sterile.

  Ma returned from showing two more lots of people around the cottage, bearing coq au vin and a bottle of good red wine to build me up.

  She found me weeping with frustration because I hadn’t got enough strength left to tear up the Wevills’ get-well card, but did it for me without comment, repelled Mona when she had the nerve to turn up at the door with a plate of Welshcakes like curling stones, and banished me off to bed.

  ‘Mona and Owen are good friends of mine,’ Mal was protesting as I went. ‘It was generous of Mona to offer to help, despite the unreasonable way Fran has taken against them.’

  ‘They may be your friends, but they’re not Fran’s,’ Ma said. ‘I could tell at a glance that that Mona’s a two-faced cow with her eye on you, despite all her smiling ways, and anyone with shiftier eyes than her husband I’ve yet to see! Anyway, if Fran doesn’t want them in her house, that should be enough for you.’

  ‘My house too, don’t forget,’ began Mal, but that’s all I heard before I shut the bedroom door. Normally I try to pour oil on troubled waters, but just then I didn’t care if the waves engulfed the whole of St Ceridwen’s Well.

  I felt much better by next day, which was just as well, because it was pretty exh
austing, despite entertaining en négligé from the sitting-room sofa.

  Rosie phoned me at some length, and I had to dissuade her from driving all the way home to ‘look after’ me. It was all pretty fraught, I can tell you, because the selfish part of me wanted her there with me, while the rest knew it was better that she finished her term and came home at Easter.

  ‘Really, darling, I’m fine, just a bit anaemic, and Granny’s giving me lots of nourishing food so I’ll soon be over that.’

  ‘But I could help and cheer you up,’ she insisted, ‘and soon you’re going to be all on your own when Mal goes away! How could he leave you like that?’

  ‘He accepted the contract, Rosie, and it’s very well paid so really he’s doing it for all of us,’ I said, though somehow it didn’t sound quite as convincing when I, rather than Mal, said that sort of thing, probably because he was the one who’d been consistently outspending our income.

  Mind you, if by some miracle Plas Gwyn does win Restoration Gardener, Mal being away for so long could prove a blessing in disguise, since at least I wouldn’t give myself away in front of him or be presenting him with yet another man to be jealous of.

  ‘As soon as I’m well I’m going out there for a holiday, Rosie, so it’s all right, really—and I’ve got Carrie and Nia and Rhodri here even when Ma’s not at the cottage, so I’m not going to be alone.’

  Eventually I persuaded her to wait until the Easter holidays. And I must say, I’ve always loved being alone in my studio working, so even though I would have loved to see her I was actually starting to feel overly surrounded by people cooped up like this, and ready for a bit of solitude.

  After lunch Carrie popped in with some of her Welshcakes, which are on a totally different culinary plain to Mona Wevill’s, and a warm and fragrant bara brith. She told Mal right to his face that he should be ashamed of himself even thinking of going off and leaving me alone for six months after I’d gone through such a trauma! He was coldly polite when she was there, but afterwards I ended up having to assure him that I didn’t mind a bit and understood why he had to do it, and the sincerity factor was probably distinctly lacking.

  Aunt Beth had already phoned last night to offer me a Highland terrier puppy when Morag next whelps, but she had forgotten Mal’s dog phobia. She wanted me to put Mal on the phone so she could give him a piece of her mind, as did Uncle Joe when he called from Miami, but I didn’t, because it isn’t going to do anything except make him angry that all my family and friends seem to be united in condemning his trip into the blue.

  Nia, when she paid a visit later in the afternoon, said it was because they didn’t understand the nature of the clever, tricky, brooding dark Celt, not being Welsh themselves, but I reminded her that Ma is half Welsh, which is why she didn’t burn our holiday house down back in the seventies when she was being a Daughter of Glendower and keeping the home fires burning for the English holiday-home invaders.

  ‘I was never a Daughter of Glendower,’ she said firmly.

  ‘And don’t you mean Mal is a selfish dark Celt? It’s only making him cross because he knows he really shouldn’t leave me for six months, particularly now. But at least if Plas Gwyn is chosen for the restoration, Gabe Weston should have been, filmed and gone before he gets back, shouldn’t he? If he doesn’t seduce Ma into selling him Fairy Glen, that is.’

  ‘You mean he’s seen it again?’ Nia demanded. ‘I know he stayed at the Druid’s Rest overnight because he wanted to spend the whole day at Plas Gwyn, but he didn’t mention the cottage. Mind you, he didn’t even hint that we were on the shortlist either!’

  ‘Yes, I thought I’d hallucinated him driving past and staring at me when I was coming home from hospital yesterday, but actually he was the Miss Patten Ma was showing round the Glen.’

  ‘Miss Patten?’

  ‘His PA, apparently, he got her to book the viewing. He told Ma Fairy Glen was totally unlike what he was looking for, but had a strange attraction for him. He seems to have a strange attraction for Ma too: she said he was a lovely man. She’s going to make all her friends phone up and vote for Plas Gwyn next week.’

  ‘He does seem very genuine,’ Nia said a trifle self-consciously. ‘I met him again when I went back up to the house with Rhodri. He’s really enthusiastic about the maze.’

  ‘I know.’ I reached for my rather well-worn copy of Restoration Gardener. ‘It says here: “I suppose all gardeners have a passion for some particular aspect of their profession, and with me it is a fascination with the history and development of the maze, from its earliest beginnings as a ritual pathway cut from turf or stone, to the later high-hedged puzzle labyrinths.”’

  ‘Amazing—you hardly had to look at the words!’ Nia said pointedly, and I flushed slightly and hastily put the book down again. ‘But at least it means if they do the restoration he will take care to keep the turf maze as it should be.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s enthusiastic about all ancient monuments, and that’s the attraction of Fairy Glen,’ I suggested.

  ‘You don’t think he really might buy it, do you?’

  ‘Ma said he isn’t looking for a holiday cottage, but somewhere to live. He’d keep his London place on as well, though. And they seem to have got on like a house on fire,’ I added gloomily. ‘Ma, of course, mentioned what happened to me, and he said he was very sorry and hoped I felt much better soon, or something. And she told him about my rose garden.’

  ‘So did I,’ Nia said guiltily. ‘It just sort of slipped out.’

  ‘Well, it’s not one of my guiltier secrets.’

  ‘Where’s your mam now?’

  ‘Showing yet more people around Fairy Glen. I’m starting to think we should charge for viewing, because I suspect at least half of them come just out of curiosity.’

  ‘I hope so. You’ll just have to put anyone unsuitable off when you are well enough to show the cottage again.’

  ‘That’s what I thought I’d done with Gabe Weston!’

  ‘Well, we need an artist or craftsman to buy it, someone like us.’

  ‘I suppose he might not do much to the glen, and let us walk there anyway,’ I suggested hopefully. The glade and the standing stones had always been my place for being quiet, my refuge, and I longed for the moment when I could go up there again and feel some kind of healing begin.

  And it was where I first set eyes on Mal, striding up out of the misty trees like a Celtic prince, as I was sitting contemplating life on the fallen slab. He’d been a great walker then—it used to be one of the things we all did together, with Rosie circling round us in her little green frog wellies like a jealous sheepdog.

  It’s strange how life changes: it all seems just the blink of an eye ago.

  ‘Why should Gabriel Weston send you flowers?’ Mal demanded, practically tossing a hand-tied and beautiful bouquet of roses into my lap next morning. ‘You hardly know the man.’

  ‘Oh, aren’t they lovely!’ I exclaimed, softly stroking the velvety petals and breathing in the heavenly scent. ‘No, of course we’ve barely met, but I expect Ma told him all about my miscarriage while she was showing him round the house—you know what she’s like.’

  ‘Only too well, but I would rather she didn’t retail our personal affairs to every chance-met stranger.’

  Before I could point out that Gabe was hardly a chance-met stranger I spotted an Interflora van drawing up by the gate. ‘I think there may be another bouquet on its way, Mal.’

  I sincerely hoped that this one was from someone innocuous, like Aunt Beth; but unfortunately the arrangement of blooms set in a square glass vase full of what looked like frogspawn came with an off-beat get-well message from Tom.

  Mal read it over my shoulder: ‘“Hey, Fran, get back up on that board, there’s a big one coming!”’

  ‘What does he mean by that? And you can’t tell me your mother told him about the miscarriage as well,’ he snapped.

  ‘No, I think it must have been Rosie.’

  ‘Rosie?
Why on earth should it be Rosie?’

  ‘Well, you were the one who emailed to tell her all about Tom turning up in the first place, so it’s hardly surprising if they are now in touch,’ I pointed out, but it still didn’t stop my Celtic prince getting into a right royal huff.

  My hand still does not really seem connected to my head, so it is just as well I have several batches of cartoons doing the rounds already, and had already dispatched samples of the Alphawoman strip on its merry way.

  Although I have been back home almost a week now I still feel light-headed and tired all the time due to the anaemia, and sort of anti-climactic and depressed, which I expect is a combination of losing the baby and Mal’s imminent departure.

  An endless loop of that old ‘MacArthur Park’ song about leaving a cake out in the rain and losing the recipe plays inside my head and sometimes breaks out in doleful snatches, but Mal doesn’t complain, even about that.

  Apart from the huff over the bouquets, he has on the whole been quite patient and sweet since I got home, even with everyone being disapproving towards him, and Ma constantly around making large quantities of nourishing food and reducing our kitchen to a slightly flour-dusted state of homely chaos.

  Usually he’s really annoyed with me when I’m ill, because he’s so useless at looking after himself, but all my get-up-and-go has got up and gone, and he’s still being nice to me. While I expect a lot of this is due to guilt over both his attitude to the baby and his imminent departure, not all, surely?

  He’s even asked the Wevills not to use our drive while he is away, so I hope they will just leave me alone, apart, perhaps, from reporting my movements.

  He paints a beautiful picture of my having the holiday of a lifetime out there in the Caribbean with him, and our turning a new page on our life together…or something. He can actually have a very poetic turn of phrase sometimes, though when you try to analyse it later without the dark blue, long-lashed eyes, the handsome face and enticing tinge of a Welsh accent to go with it, it doesn’t sound quite as impressive.