‘Come this way.’
They followed Oliver into the studio, with Tarka skidding on the shiny floor. On a low glass-topped table Freddie’s sketch books were laid out, along with a set of photographs Tessa had done of his carvings. In the centre, neatly folded, was Kate’s red hair ribbon.
Freddie’s eyes rounded. ‘Oh my God,’ he said, after a silence, and Tessa thought she’d never, ever heard him say that before. ‘How – how did these get here?’
‘Ask your wonderful daughter.’
‘Don’t be cross with me, Dad,’ pleaded Tessa.
‘Would you mind sitting down?’ Oliver waved an arm at an enormous white sofa.
‘Cor, this is low, too near the floor for me,’ Freddie said, but he sat down next to Tessa, his knees hunched. His eyes looked piercingly at Oliver who sat on one of the cane chairs. ‘So what’s this about?’
‘May I call you Freddie?’ Oliver asked.
‘Ah – okay,’ Freddie said, ‘and this is Tarka.’
‘He’s lovely,’ Oliver said, admiringly. He reached over and smoothed Tarka’s head.
Tessa thought she could hear Freddie’s heart thumping. He looked apprehensive, and his cheek was twitching.
‘Well, Freddie,’ Oliver began. ‘We – that is me and two of the tutors here – have looked at your work and we’re impressed, very impressed indeed. Especially, as Tessa tells me, you had no art training. Is that right?’
‘Ah – that’s right. All I ever had was one pencil, and a weekly art lesson in school. We had to sit there and copy something, copy a picture or draw an apple or a blimin’ teapot. It was boring, and we never were allowed to keep our pictures. Only once in my life, the day the 1914–18 war ended, the teacher Mr Price – oh, I hated him – he hated me too! – on that day he said we could draw anything we liked – and I did a shire horse with a little girl on it – Kate.’
‘This one.’ Tessa held up the old picture which Freddie’s mum had proudly kept in a frame.
‘And when the teacher tried to take it off me (I were nine years old) I grabbed it and ran away. I folded it into eight and stuffed it in me pocket and ran two miles across the fields in the pouring rain to me granny’s place. She lived in a cottage in the middle of a wood with her chickens – but when I got there, soaking wet, with me picture, I found her dead on the floor. Dead as a stone. Terrible it was.’
Oliver was listening, fascinated. ‘So how did you start the stone carving?’
‘Ah – well, that’s another story. A stonemason, Herbie, used to ask me to haul stone for him, and one day he bet me a pound that I couldn’t carve an angel out of a stone gatepost. Well, I knew I could. I could already see the angel inside the stone, looking out.’
‘This one.’ Tessa held up the photo of the stone angel.
‘Then, once I started, I couldn’t stop,’ Freddie continued. ‘I had a queue of ideas on me mind – things I wanted to carve.’
Oliver listened patiently as Freddie told him about his first commission, about the alabaster quarry, and about his more recent wood carving. Tessa sat there smiling. She hadn’t seen him so animated for years. It felt good to see him sitting there, coming alive, his eyes twinkling with untold secrets. She sensed him warming to Oliver who was giving his whole self to listening, with empathy, and with obvious enjoyment.
Freddie would have gone on talking for hours if Oliver hadn’t intervened neatly in the gap between two stories.
‘You did most of your work in pencil?’
‘Ah – I had one pencil to last about three years – sharpened it down to a stub. Precious, it was, that stub of pencil.’
‘We particularly admired your detailed drawings of machinery.’ Oliver turned the pages of one of the sketch books. ‘What kind of machines were they? Like this one, for example?’
‘I used to invent things,’ Freddie said. ‘The one you’ve got there was a steam powered heli-bus.’
‘A steam powered heli-bus. I LOVE it!’ Oliver’s eyes lit up. He looked at Tessa. ‘I think your father is like Leonardo.’
‘Leonardo?’ Freddie looked bewildered.
‘Leonardo da Vinci, Dad,’ Tessa said. ‘He painted the Mona Lisa.’
‘Ah – well, I never studied art. Wish I’d had the chance,’ Freddie said wistfully.
It was the cue Oliver was waiting for. ‘Well, Freddie, Elrose College of Art is keen to offer places to mature students now – we feel so much talent went undiscovered through the wartime years, and mature students have a high work ethic, and life experience to share. So – we’d like to offer you a place here on our three year Bachelor of Arts course, from this coming September.’
Freddie looked at Tessa. ‘You mean my daughter, surely, not me.’
‘No. We mean you, Freddie. We’d like to offer you a bursary.’
‘A bursary?’
‘It’s like a scholarship, Dad – a free place,’ Tessa said.
‘Me? You want ME? At my age?’
‘Yes, we do. I hope you’ll accept.’
‘Would I have to come here every day?’
‘Four days a week, in term time.’
Tarka sat up and put a large paw on Freddie’s knee, gazing at him. Freddie fondled the dog’s large head. Finally he said, ‘I can’t leave me dog.’
‘You can bring him with you,’ Oliver said. ‘He’s a good dog, and some of the students will like to draw him.’
Freddie retreated into a transitional silence. Oliver handed him a folder. ‘It’s set out in there,’ he explained. ‘The offer of a bursary, and the information about Elrose College, the tutors you’ll be working with, and the choices you can make. You’ll see there’s a Sculpture option, and Calligraphy which seems to be another of your gifts.’
Freddie looked at Tessa. ‘Calligraphy?’
‘Lettering, Dad.’
‘Will you think it over?’ Oliver said. ‘It’s a golden opportunity.’
‘It could be,’ Freddie said. ‘But I will think about it.’
‘You can come back and see me, or phone if you’ve got any questions – anything you want to know.’ Oliver stood up and stretched. Tessa helped him to gather up the sketch books and photographs. She took Kate’s red ribbon and lovingly tied it around the bundle, aware of Freddie watching her with a poignant expression.
The two men shook hands, with eye contact sparking between them. Freddie managed to say thank you, and then he disappeared into an even deeper silence. It lasted all the way home, even when they stopped by the river, and stopped for fish and chips.
Back at home, with the bundle of sketch books on the dresser, Freddie made just one comment. ‘So that’s what you were up to.’
Later, Tessa sat cuddling Benita, and observed Freddie studying the folder.
In the morning he was still quiet, reading the information over and over, and staring at buzzards circling in the sky. He seemed emotional, but didn’t communicate until lunchtime when he picked a bunch of daffodils from the garden. ‘These are for you, dear, to take back to London,’ he said, ‘and, you know, I’ve thought long and hard about this bursary. Been awake all night. ’Tis a dream, you see, a dream I had all me life. And I appreciate what you’ve done. But, honestly, I can’t do it. I’ve got to say no.’
‘Aw, Dad – I’m disappointed, for you,’ Tessa said. ‘Why don’t you take your time and think about it a bit longer? There’s no pressure.’
But Freddie shook his head.
‘What’s stopping you?’ Tessa asked, but he wouldn’t tell her. His eyes took on a glaze of secrecy. She felt powerless and bitterly disappointed. Privately, she feared Freddie was on the edge of a breakdown.
‘Now, don’t you worry about me,’ he said. ‘I know you gotta go back to London – and I want you to follow your own dreams, not mine.’
A few days later, when Tessa was back in London, Dr Jarvis walked up the path to The Pines, past the empty chicken run with its rusting wire, through the wreckage of Freddie’s vegetable garden, which
had become a patch of tall thistles, dandelion and rosebay willow herb. He paused to look at the stone carvings in the yard, some of them overgrown with moss and bindweed. The door to Freddie’s workshop had always been open and throbbing with the sound of chiselling, the hum of the lathe, and Freddie’s whistling. Today it was closed, and ivy fanned across it from the wall.
Benita was on the doorstep, apparently waiting for him, and she escorted him inside, rubbing around his ankles as he pushed the door open.
He found Freddie in his chair by the window, staring into space, with Tarka leaning adoringly against his legs. Freddie looked at him with startled eyes. ‘Who called you, Doc?’ he asked.
‘Lexi.’ Dr Jarvis sat down in Kate’s chair. He didn’t open his brown leather doctor’s case, but put it on the floor, and looked at Freddie with knowing eyes. ‘Well, the dog and cat look bonny. What about you?’
Freddie struggled to speak. His hands gripped the threadbare arms of his chair.
‘Take your time.’
‘Ah – Lexi.’ Freddie said finally. ‘I asked her to go to the Post Office for me, and she said no. She said – “Come on, Freddie, you can do that yourself.” Then – I – I couldn’t help it, I broke down and told her.’
‘Told her what?’
‘What I’m gonna tell you now,’ Freddie said, his voice gathered strength. ‘BUT . . .’ His eyes were fierce with terror. ‘I want you to promise me that you won’t lock me up in one of those places – even though I’m past caring. My life couldn’t be much worse, Doc. I know, you’re gonna tell me to get up and go out – but I can’t, see? I can’t. Only if I’ve got me dog with me. And those beggars in the Post Office, they don’t like dogs, they won’t let me bring him in. ’Tis like a warzone, that blimin’ Post Office.’
‘So what exactly is the problem? I need to understand, Freddie, if I’m going to help you.’
Freddie struggled to get the words out.
‘I know you’re still grieving for Kate,’ Dr Jarvis said.
‘Ah – but it’s not that, Doc. Now, I’ve never told this to anyone, not even Kate when she was here, not even Tessa.’ He stared at Dr Jarvis with desperate eyes. ‘I’m like me mother was. Scared to go out – it’s an irrational fear, I know that, but she drummed it into me, all my life, that I wasn’t to tell anyone in case she got sent to the mad house.’
‘We don’t have mad houses now,’ Dr Jarvis said. ‘I understand your fear very well – and it can be treated quite simply with some tablets, and a few sessions of talking to a specialist doctor who will come to see you here in your own home.’
Freddie looked at him in astonishment.
‘I promise you, no one is going to lock you up,’ Dr Jarvis continued, ‘and you don’t have to accept the treatment I’m offering. You can go on as you are, if you like.’
‘No.’ Freddie shook his head. ‘’Tis ruining my life. It’s got worse, see, since Kate died, and my daughter Tessa wants me to go out and about – she even tried to get me into art college, would you believe? At my age!’
‘You’re not old. You’re a spring chicken,’ Dr Jarvis said. ‘Look at me – in my seventies and still working, still playing golf and doing the garden.’
‘How long will this treatment take to work?’
‘It depends on how determined you are – but the tablets will make a difference immediately, the talking will take longer, but it’s worth doing in the long term.’
‘Then – let’s give it a go,’ Freddie said. ‘And I’m glad you came, Doc – I feel ten ton lighter now I’ve told you.’
CHAPTER 22
There Will be an Answer
A robin was the first bird to investigate the brightly painted bus in a secluded part of the wood. It had been parked there for longer than the robin could remember. No one came out or went in to it. The robin assumed it had been abandoned and was now part of the wood. The door was open, and at first it had banged to and fro on windy nights, keeping the wild creatures away. But over the years tenacious vines of ivy, bindweed and wild clematis had crept over it, immobilising the door, twining in through the open windows. Brambles arched right over the roof with strong thorny stems, some even touching the woodland floor on the other side, sending eager roots fanning out into the rich leaf mould, making a new thicket. An elder tree seeded itself and grew vigorously from behind the front wheel, its sharply scented branches pushing into the driver’s window, through the steering wheel and over the red leather seat.
In early March, the robin dared to fly in through an open window. First he checked that he could fly out again and not be trapped, then he fetched his mate from the curly oak tree where she was waiting, fluttering her wings impatiently. Together they explored the interior of the bus, the moss-covered table and chairs, the rusting Queenie stove, the shelves of mouldering books. They found the right spot between an Oxford Dictionary and the Penguin Modern Poets which were leaning against each other creating a robin-sized wigwam. Perfect! The robins set about building a nest in there, flying in and out from the wood, their beaks bursting with twigs and straw. They lined the nest with sheep’s wool and moss.
In April when the robins were busy feeding a family of five, the wild bees found the pencil hole in the bodywork, the hole that Tessa had skilfully camouflaged as the centre of a marigold. With much humming and dancing in the air, the wild bees crawled in and set up home for their queen, building a golden dome of hexagonal cells. They worked the elderflowers and the pale green flowers of the lime trees, and made honey in such abundance that it oozed out of the pencil hole and poured down the side of the bus, attracting more wild creatures, the badgers, ants and foxes.
A family of wood mice moved in, exquisitely beautiful and sensitive with their jet black eyes and shell-like ears. They chewed the pages of an orange and white Penguin classic, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, and made a soft white mansion of a nest for their children and grandchildren. Below the bus was a haven of dry leaf litter where hedgehogs hibernated and families of copper-skinned slowworms set up home. Ferns, mosses and fungi colonised the wheels and the steps.
Like a sunken ship becoming a reef, the bus became one with the wood, completely covered in summer by leaves and blossom. Only in winter did the colours glow between the lattice of bare branches, like stained glass. Over time, the bus itself would become organic, a rusting, flaking relic returning its timber, paper and metal to the earth.
The track through the woods became narrower from never being used. The old wheel-ruts filled with leaves; the wood irises, hemp-agrimony and tough grasses made clumps along the edges, and blackthorn bushes seeded themselves. What had once been a wide path for horses, tractors and carts became a rabbit path, used by the creatures of the wood.
Tessa pounced on the white envelope with Somerset County Council along the top. Standing in the kitchen window of her flat in London, she unfolded the letter eagerly, unprepared for the cold wave of rejection rushing into her life. No. They had said no. No, she couldn’t restore the Holy Well. She couldn’t build a barn and open a healing centre. Not in Monterose.
To add insult to injury, John Whitsby’s signature was at the bottom.
Furious and hurt, Tessa screwed the letter into a ball and hurled it into the bin. ‘Pompous bunch of bureaucrats,’ she ranted, and slumped into a chair, staring out of the window at rooftops and chimneys, everything terracotta and grey in the heat-haze of early summer. I’m stuck in London. Forever and bloody ever, she thought, and felt the longing dragging her down. The blue-green landscapes of Somerset burned in her mind. Not another summer. Not another summer in London.
When the first surge of anger had passed, she retrieved the letter from the bin and smoothed it out again. John Whitsby had added a handwritten note, commiserating, and advising her to appeal.
‘Bring it over here, Tessa,’ Starlinda said, on the phone. ‘I need to touch this man’s signature. Something’s going on. I’ve got an hour now, before my next client.’
The two women sat in Starlinda’s rooftop garden, under a potted palm tree, with the letter on the coffee table, weighted down with a chunk of rose quartz. ‘It’s not John Whitsby’s fault – he’s okay, he’s a kindred spirit,’ Starlinda said. ‘It’s something else – some missing ingredient, Tessa. What’s missing from your life?’
Tessa hesitated.
‘Close your eyes, and put your hand on your heart,’ Starlinda said, patiently. ‘What is missing from your life?’
Tessa knew the answer, but it stuck in her throat.
‘What is missing from your life?’ Starlinda repeated quietly. ‘Let it speak, and if it can only speak in tears, then let the tears flow. Tears were given to us for cleansing and healing.’
Tessa felt herself collapsing. ‘Art,’ she gasped, and yesterday’s pain engulfed her in what felt like the final letting-go.
Starlinda sat with her in an oasis of calm. ‘So where is Art?’
‘No one knows,’ Tessa said. ‘No one even knows if he – if he’s alive. Lou said he’d gone to Findhorn, and someone else said he was in Nepal. But even if I found him, Starlinda, he’s with Rowan and their child.’
‘He may not be. Have you looked at his star-chart, Tessa?’
‘I have – and it does prove we’ve got a strong link.’
‘I’d call it an unbreakable bond,’ Starlinda said.
‘But what if—’
‘No – you must ride over the what-ifs to get to the truth. You have to find him, Tessa. I think you know that – don’t you?’
Tessa nodded dumbly.
‘Nothing will happen until you take the first step. This letter, this decision, has been sent to challenge you, to make you go beyond the fear, beyond the pain, and find the blessing.’ She handed the letter back to Tessa. ‘This letter is a signpost. Darling, you have to do something bold – a leap of faith. And the time is NOW.’
Tessa stared at her, frightened by what she knew she must do.
‘You’re an awesome friend. Thanks.’ She gave Starlinda a hug. ‘I’ll go now. I know you’ve got a client.’
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