Sowing Secrets

by Ashley, Trisha

  Posted

  I woke from my doze with a feeling of impending doom that wasn’t entirely due to the dream I’d just had, in which I’d been forlornly looking down at an iridescent oil stain on the pub car park where a camper van had once stood. Its rainbow had held no promise of a speedy return.

  The part of my brain not occupied with projecting unwelcome memories onto my inner eyelids had been tossing over the facts while I slept, and now presented me with the conclusion that if Gabe Weston actually came to live in St Ceridwen’s there was a high risk that he would get to know that I’d had Rosie years before I met Mal. (Father unknown, candidates various, but popular opinion awarding the cherry to Rhodri.)

  Surely he would then eventually suspect that she might be his…or was the whole thing only blindingly obvious to me? And what would he do if he did find out…and then Mal found out that he found out? Or Rosie? Well, the complications seem endless.

  My God, what if the press ever found out?

  Feeling a need to run this past Nia I left a message on her mobile asking her to meet me at the pub later—and her actually getting a mobile phone, something she’s always been against, is a sure sign that she is seldom going back to her cottage to pick up her messages these days! Is there something she isn’t telling even me, her oldest friend?

  While I slept, the post had come. (Huw daily performs languid concentric circles around the village on his bicycle, so the mail can arrive any time.) There was yet another sketch from Tom, this time of a rose with a flattering representation of me in its heart-shaped centre. I think it was meant to be a Damask, but clearly a rose is just a rose to him.

  No written message, but when I checked for emails he’d sent me one to the effect that as he rode a big, creamy wave in today he was thinking of me.

  Oh dear. I rather feel as though a big wave is trying to overturn me when all I’m trying to do is paddle my own canoe to safety.

  Elvis was helpfully singing ‘Return to Sender’ in my head, but there doesn’t seem to be a computer button that sends messages back with the words ‘thanks, but no thanks’. And he knows I live here, so I can’t return the sketch.

  Maybe Nia can suggest a way of cooling him off—unless I’m flattering myself, and he’s just being kind. I’ll take his little missives with me, anyway, and show her if I get the chance. It will be the first time I’ve been to the pub since I came back from the hospital, apart from my brief appearance on Restoration Gardener night, though I have been round to Teapots a couple of times to exercise my legs and see Carrie.

  Life is slowly getting back to normal. Well, normal apart from my husband being on the other side of the world, the probable father of my only child moving into the village at any second, and my ex-boyfriend bombarding me with romantic messages while ingratiating himself with my daughter in the mistaken belief he is her father.

  I suddenly wondered if Gabriel might just be staying at the hotel tonight. But even if he is, we should be safe enough in the back bar in the early evening, when any halfway decent TV celebrity ought to be stuffing his face in the restaurant or hitting the bright lights of Llandudno.

  Before the light went, I fed the hens and then shut them up for the night. The garden was peaceful, just the sighing of the breeze through the bushes and the grating of rose stems against wood…

  In fact, there was something very odd about the way the Mermaid and Golden Showers hung loosely from the trellis I’d nailed along the top of the fence dividing our garden from the Wevills’, and I walked across to have a closer look.

  Since they moved in I’m used to finding rose prunings from their side tossed over into our garden, but this time they have gone one better. They must have put their secateurs right through the holes in the trellis and snipped through every stem within reach, so the top branches hung there swaying, amputated from the roots.

  I am sure I would have noticed if they’d done it this morning when I let the hens out, so perhaps they did it while I was out. Though God knows why—unless Mona had a fit of pique after being rebuffed by Gabriel.

  I felt certain they were watching me, even though I couldn’t see them for the tears blurring my eyes, so I made a very rude gesture towards their house.

  Tomorrow I would have to pull all the dying stems out and prune the bushes properly, though I’m not sure they haven’t served a death sentence on my poor Mermaid, who was doing so well after a very slow start.

  And although they are entitled to cut back any of my plants that grow over into their garden, isn’t cutting them on my side illegal?

  I drove to the Druid’s Rest since my legs were still a bit trembly from climbing up the glen, but halfway I stopped and tossed the air freshener Mal had hung from the rear-view mirror into a roadside litter bin. Whatever that aroma was supposed to be, the fading smell of vomit from the heater was infinitely preferable.

  Huw and Carrie were already there in a dark corner when I walked in—but unusually they seemed to be arguing instead of all lovey-dovey.

  ‘What’s up with Carrie?’ I asked Nia, joining her at our usual table.

  ‘Hasn’t she told you? Huw had a poison-pen letter saying she was seeing someone else!’

  ‘That’s ridiculous!’

  ‘Yes, but these things are sort of insidious—they plant nasty ideas in people’s minds. There are a few going round lately, apparently, though not everyone is admitting to it.’ She looked a bit self-conscious.

  ‘Nia! Have you had one?’ I demanded, wide-eyed.

  ‘No, Rhodri. I was there in his office when he opened it, and he’s so transparent I knew something was up and made him show me.’

  ‘So what did it say?’

  She went slightly pink but said off-handedly, ‘Oh, something about my setting my cap at him—so old-fashioned—and he’d better watch out, and perhaps he’d better find out why my last husband got rid of me so fast.’

  ‘I don’t call nearly twenty years fast,’ I objected.

  ‘No, it was quite ridiculous, and Rhodri said he’d like it if I set my…well, anyway, we just laughed it off,’ she said hastily.

  I didn’t press her: things seemed to be going quite nicely without any intervention from me, and with a bit of luck she would shortly lose the last vestiges of her ‘you lord of the manor, me peasant’ hang-up, which is totally outdated, and then there would be no bar to True Love.

  Do Druids have weddings?

  ‘I wonder who the poison-pen writer is? And why haven’t I had one? I mean, everyone knows I had an illegitimate baby, and then what with Tom turning up and that scene in the restaurant you’d think I’d be a prime candidate!’

  ‘Yes, but maybe other people are getting them about you?’ she suggested, which was a bit disconcerting.

  ‘There has been an odd sort of atmosphere around the village lately,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘And old Miss Griffiths didn’t answer me when I spoke to her the other day, but I assumed she was just going deaf. Do you think—’

  ‘Don’t get paranoid. As you say, your misdoings are all old news, so raking them up again wouldn’t shock anyone.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ I said, and described (suitably edited) my conversation with Gabe Weston. ‘I don’t want him hearing any rumours that might make him speculate about who Rosie’s dad is!’

  ‘Even if he’s living here, I don’t suppose he’ll hear any local gossip,’ she said reassuringly. ‘But did he really say he wouldn’t touch the standing stones and oak grove if he bought the Glen?’

  Nia’s priorities are clearly in a different order to my own.

  ‘Yes, apparently Ma had told him we both loved to go there, and it was a special place for us.’

  I tactfully refrained from informing her that he also knew about the Druid thing, since she seems a bit secretive about it. ‘He doesn’t want to do anything radical to the rest of the glen, or the cottage either. In fact, he was being so horribly understanding I ran out of reasons not to let him buy it—only n
ow I’m afraid that if he’s actually living here and finds out that Rosie isn’t Mal’s, eventually he might suspect that she’s his daughter.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so, from what you say,’ she said optimistically. ‘He doesn’t seem to know exactly how long it’s been since the night you met, does he? So unless something does put it into his head, you should be safe enough. I mean, even if he does hear the village gossip, the palm is likely to go to poor old Rhodri.’

  ‘I suppose so—and, Nia, you’ve never even thought for a minute that it actually was Rhodri, have you?’

  ‘No, stupid. He’s as transparent as a jellyfish—how could he keep a secret like that? Every time he looked at you or Rosie it would be written across his face. He loves you like a brother, and Rosie like an uncle.’

  I was tempted to ask her how he felt about her, but decided not to: I don’t want to make her go defensive and scupper a promising romance.

  ‘Where is Rhodri tonight? Is he coming down?’

  ‘He is down—I should have warned you that Gabe is staying over until tomorrow. They went to talk to some gardening firm—the programme hires local labour as well as the regular team they bring with them. Of course, after they finish filming you either have to pay for any help or do it yourself. In our case we’ll have to carry on alone, plus students in the summer and—’

  ‘What do you mean, he’s down? Down where?’ I cut in.

  ‘Here, in the restaurant, having dinner. They invited me too, but you know how I feel about eating overpriced fancy food with old lemon-face serving it out as though she would like to see me washing the dishes and sweeping the floor instead.’

  I relaxed slightly. ‘Oh, well, I’ll be long gone by the time they finish, and I don’t suppose he would come in here anyway.’

  ‘Why don’t you want to meet him? I thought now you’d had it all out you might not mind so much, and he’s very nice.’

  ‘He is nice,’ I admitted, ‘and he was really kind about the baby. But even so, Nia, when you’ve shared one night of…shared one night with a total stranger, you don’t automatically feel relaxed and happy meeting him in social situations years later. Especially when you’ve got a great big secret you really, really don’t want him to know.’

  ‘I think you’re going to have to harden yourself to it, then,’ she said drily. ‘Here he comes with Rhodri.’

  Over a Barrel

  It says something for their social standing and/or celebrity status that Mrs Forrester had let them dine in the restaurant at all, since Rhodri looked like a rather down-at-heel lumberjack and Gabe was still wearing the cords and sweatshirt (but not the cowboy boots) he’d had on earlier. I strongly suspect they had been placed in the darkest corner and the candle on their table hastily extinguished.

  ‘Fran!’ Rhodri gave me a great bear hug and kissed me affectionately as usual. ‘Wonderful to see you out and about! Gabe’s been telling me he met you earlier and that he’s going to buy the Glen—great news!’

  Gabe watched our embrace with interest, then awarded me a polite kiss on one cheek. He smelled rather enticingly of sun-dried cotton and lawn mowings. ‘So long as Fran hasn’t changed her mind in the interval.’

  ‘No…’ I began. ‘Not quite. I just—’

  ‘Good, because I’ve already phoned your mother, and she says she’s delighted.’

  ‘You have? She is?’ I blinked. He hadn’t hung around long enough for me to have much time for second thoughts!

  ‘Yes. It should go through very quickly, since I don’t have to sell my house first—two or three weeks at the most should do it. She’s going to phone you later.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, slightly dazedly.

  ‘And she’s driving across tomorrow morning to talk it over, so I’m staying here tonight.’

  ‘She is?’ I parroted, starting to feel punch-drunk.

  ‘Yes, and she’s also kindly suggested I move in whenever I want to, rather than stay here in the hotel when I start filming at Easter.’

  ‘She did?’

  Ever had the feeling that the ground has been cut right away from under your feet? I sat down again since my legs had folded, rather than because I’d intended to.

  ‘Of course, I told her I could only do that if you agreed too,’ he said with a look of limpid innocence that didn’t fool me one bit.

  ‘Well, that calls for a celebration, doesn’t it?’ Rhodri said, happily unaware of any undercurrents and taking my agreement for granted. ‘Let’s have a bottle of champagne!’

  ‘You can’t afford champagne. You need all your money for the restoration,’ Nia said firmly. ‘It had better be Murphy’s all round.’

  ‘I’ll get them,’ offered Gabriel, getting up. ‘In fact, I’ll get champagne if you really want it, though I’m not too keen on the stuff myself.’

  ‘Let’s stick to beer,’ Nia said, ‘and not get delusions of grandeur. If you want to push the boat out you could get a couple of packets of crisps, though—Fran and I haven’t eaten yet.’

  I watched as two giggling women who had been watching him avidly from the corner suddenly leaped to their feet and intercepted him. And noted his delightful smile as he wrote his name across their proffered paper napkins—and across their hearts too, going by the adoring expression on their faces.

  The locals, who had been watching him just as keenly if less overtly, at least left him alone—for the moment.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here, Fran,’ Rhodri said, ‘ because we’ve got the designs for Plas Gwyn and I wanted you to see them.’

  He pulled some papers out of a cardboard tube and opened them out. The corners kept trying to spring back until we pinned them down with bottles and ashtrays.

  Gabe returned. ‘She’s bringing them out.’

  ‘You’re honoured!’ Nia said admiringly. ‘What it is to be famous!’

  He grinned at her and sat down next to me, so close our knees brushed—which is admittedly difficult to avoid when you’re sitting on a semi-circular seat around a barrel. Leaning over the plans he smoothed them out with long, slightly spatulate fingers.

  ‘I don’t know how much sense these are going to make to you,’ he said. ‘This top one gives some idea of how I hope the garden will look when it’s finished, and if we put this overlay over the top you can see how it relates to all the earlier garden features we’ve got evidence for.’

  ‘It looks a bit complicated because of the overlapping,’ Rhodri explained. ‘Every generation seems to have added something, and then most of it was simply turfed over in the eighteenth century when landscape gardens were in vogue, and has stayed that way ever since.’

  Nia and I stared at him, amazed: he was really getting into this, but I suppose it was just an extension of his keen interest in his house.

  ‘Most gardens evolve through several different styles according to fashion,’ agreed Gabe. ‘Sometimes the whole lot is swept away and a new scheme replaces it; sometimes it’s piecemeal—which is what happened at Plas Gwyn.’

  ‘But there doesn’t seem to be a garden at all,’ I objected. ‘Just grass and trees.’

  ‘That’s mostly what a landscape garden is—a carefully arranged vista of grass, trees and water. At the front of the house it stretched right down to the river; they just remodelled what was there. Some of the garden features dotted about, like statues and arches, were left over from previous schemes.’

  ‘And Aled’s artistic trees,’ put in Nia helpfully. ‘Though I don’t suppose for a minute that they were originally meant to be those shapes.’

  ‘There’s the ha-ha too,’ Rhodri said. ‘The one that stops the cattle from Home Farm getting on to the grounds.’

  I pored over the map, trying to make sense of the two layers. ‘So are you going to restore the landscape garden at the front of the house?’

  We were interrupted by the approach of Mrs Forrester with a laden tray. Rhodri stood up and took it from her politely, but she didn’t give him even the ghost of her usual s
imper: this time her smiles were all for Gabe.

  There was nowhere to put it on the table, so we took our drinks and lined them up on the shelf along the back of the seat. Gabe’s arm brushed the back of my head as he pushed his glass along, and I was suddenly very conscious of his closeness. I would have moved my knees away by now, if there had been anywhere to move them to. Getting up and sitting next to Rhodri would be tantamount to admitting I found Gabe’s proximity disturbing.

  If he’s going to make a habit of joining us we are going to have to sit at a proper table, one with lots of space between the chairs.

  He turned and looked down at me, his eyes crinkling up at the corners in the way they did when he was amused by something—and if he can read me like he can read gardens, then I’m sunk.

  ‘The long-term plan does include restoring the landscape garden, of course, but most of that will be left to Rhodri,’ he said. ‘The programme will mainly concentrate on other areas—and there was a mass of information in those documents Rhodri found.’

  ‘Yes, even a scale drawing of the maze, so it can be restored to its original size—it was nearly twenty-five feet across!’ Nia said enthusiastically. ‘The paths at the edge that have almost vanished will be recut, and the yew hedge around it only needs trimming so it looks less like a row of enormous breasts.’

  ‘This area between the house and the maze should be a Dutch garden with lots of topiary,’ Gabe’s finger traced the path down, ‘with a fountain here, where that statue is.’

  ‘It is—the statue is actually the top of it. Mother filled it in,’ Rhodri said, ‘but we can dig it out again.’

  ‘The wilderness on this side can be thinned and restocked at a later date,’ Nia put in. ‘This stretch of grass will be for parking cars, so it just needs roping off and some signs putting up.’

  ‘And the knot garden that was once right here in front of the courtyard is going to be put back—but with lavender and not box,’ Rhodri said.