The Memory Garden

by Rachel Hore

  Patrick noticed her interest.

  ‘I’ll show you round later if you like,’ he said, putting down the bottle and glasses on an ugly tiled coffee-table. ‘But it’s warmest in here. Try Uncle Val’s throne,’ he said, gesturing to the armchair. ‘It’s really very comfortable.’ He set a glass of wine on what was probably a plant stand by her side and settled into the sofa opposite.

  ‘Here’s to Val,’ he said, raising his own glass to her, ‘and to you, of course. I’m glad you’ve come. I don’t get many visitors.’ He gulped at his wine, too quickly.

  He looked tired, Mel noticed, and sort of sad.

  ‘And are you finding here a good place to work?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Did I tell you anything in my emails about the book I’m writing?’

  ‘Only that it was about the local artists.’

  ‘It’s all about the Newlyn and Lamorna Schools.’

  She told him how she had visited some of the locations they painted and discovered some papers in the Morrab Library. ‘A diary and a memoir. A local history expert in Newlyn has given me some other leads. What I need to do is visit St Ives and have a chat with an art historian who knows the period well. Guy called Jonathan Smithfield.’

  ‘Where are the main archives?’ asked Patrick, lifting his glass to admire the effect of the firelight shining through the ruby wine.

  ‘Oh, all over the place. Cornwall, Birmingham, London, America. All much easier to track on the Internet these days, of course.’

  ‘The Newlyn Group has been written about a lot, am I right? I vaguely remember going to an exhibition round here years ago.’

  ‘Yes, but they’re not fashionable now. They were into social realism – the kind of Victorian painting of ordinary working folk with a moral. You know, stoicism in the face of tragedy, the glorification of hard work and suffering.’

  ‘Ah, yes, fishermen’s wives sobbing in the dawn because their men have gone down in the storm.’

  ‘Exactly.’ She was gratified that he pretended to have at least some interest in her subject. ‘Dozens of artists came to Newlyn in the last quarter of the nineteenth century,’ she went on, ‘and many settled for some years, made it their home.’

  ‘How does this tie up with the ones who came to Lamorna?’

  ‘That was a bit later, really. There was Samuel Birch, a man from a fairly humble background, who came here in the early Edwardian era. He became known as Lamorna Birch to distinguish him from another Samuel Birch.’

  ‘I’m sure Uncle Val used to talk about him. He married a local girl, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. And then there were the Knights – Harold and his wife Laura. Laura is the better-known painter. And Alfred Munnings joined them at one point.’

  ‘Oh, yes. The bloke who painted horses.’

  ‘That’s right. A larger-than-life character, by all accounts. The locals were shocked by his raucous behaviour. But there were others, too. Many of them started off in Newlyn but came to Lamorna as well. Even Augustus John visited later on.’

  ‘But no more maudlin moral tableaux?’ a packet of cigarettesited in

  ‘No. This generation was more influenced by French Impressionism. They wanted to capture the beauty of the area. Theirs were happy pictures, often with a holiday mood.’

  Patrick reached for the bottle to top up their glasses. ‘I think I know the sort of thing,’ he said. ‘And what angle particularly interests you?’

  ‘The women, I suppose. The obstacles they had to deal with to become successful painters. I’m still fine-tuning my arguments,’ Mel said. ‘Are you sure I’m not boring you?’

  ‘Not at all. It’s fascinating.’

  Mel plunged into an explanation of her theories about the women painters, the subjects they chose to paint, their relationships with the men and how they had different obstacles in pursuing their careers.

  ‘Some of them came from quite privileged backgrounds,’ she said. ‘Nineteen hundred was still a time when it was very difficult for a woman of no means or social standing to develop artistic talent, unlike some of the men – Lamorna Birch is a great example of a man who pulled himself up by his bootstraps. Laura Knight was left in near poverty after her mother died, but she was a middle-class girl with education and connections. She still needed enormous determination, though, to become a painter.’

  ‘Sometimes a working girl became a model and married the painter,’ Patrick suggested.

  ‘Well, yes,’ she said, ‘that did happen. But of course,’ she added quickly, ‘the husband might not encourage her talent, and then children would start to come along. She would have to be very strongminded to practise her art in that case. She would have to make sacrifices.’

  ‘And you?’ Patrick said, leaning forward and carefully placing his wine glass on the table. He sat back, his hands clasped behind his head, and considered her seriously. ‘Do you make sacrifices? Chrissie told me you work much too hard.’

  ‘I enjoy my work,’ Mel replied. ‘It’s challenging and creative. So what else has my wretched sister been telling you?’

  ‘Nothing terrible, I assure you,’ he teased.

  ‘What about you, what is it you do?’ she said. Somehow he had got away with asking all the questions.

  ‘I sell inventions.’

  ‘You’re an inventor?’ She looked at him with curiosity.

  ‘Not exactly. My partner and I run a website for inventors. We help them sort out patents, which is a complex business, and try to find firms to develop and manufacture their ideas. We take a cut if it works out.’

  ‘What inventions have you sold?’

  ‘Quite a range, really. A new kind of rotary clothes-line, ergonomic chairs, gardening tools. There was a children’s toy that was a nice little earner a couple of Christmases ago – a remote controlled cat that climbed curtains.’

  ‘I remember – it was cute. My boyfriend’s kids had one. Ex-boyfriend, I mean.’ She stared at the ugly whorls on the carpet to hide her confusion. Boxing Day, three Christmases ago, the four of them together in Jake’s flat, little Freya bouncing with excitement as she ripped brightly coloured paper off present after present, her laughter at the antics of the funny little robot cat.

  ‘. . . plenty of less interesting things, too,’ Patrick was saying. ‘Widgets that reduce friction in engines, new types of packaging. And a lot of ideas that waste time and never come to anything.’ of Newlyn and LamornareGo

  ‘How long have you been going?’

  ‘Five or six years. It started when Geoff and I were at uni. We had a deeply boring job picking blackcurrants one summer, and we thought up a gadget to help. In the end, about eight years ago, we got a manufacturer to take it up, but he ripped us off, designed his own version and did very well with it. Never gave us a penny. We didn’t want that to happen to other people so we started up the business as a sideline. It just grew and grew. On the whole I like the job. I was in high finance before and, quite frankly, I was getting burned out. It’s flexible, there’s some travel involved and you never know what you’ll be dealing with next. It’s amazing trying to gauge which idea is going to take off. But Geoff’s pulling out now, selling me his share of the business. I’ll be free to do what I want with it.’

  Mel nodded. ‘Will you need to be up in London all the time?’

  ‘That’s one of the things I’m considering. I’m going to keep my flat in Islington, and I can always travel up when I need to. But I want to take advantage of the break and get this place sorted out.’

  ‘Chrissie said you have family down here.’

  ‘Yes, my parents live outside Truro. My brother and I were brought up on the family farm, but neither of us wanted to work on the land – Joe’s a schoolteacher locally – so Dad sold the lease when he retired.’

  ‘And Uncle Val?’

  ‘Ah yes, dear old Uncle Val. Look.’ Patrick fetched a framed black and white photograph from a table by the window. ‘I found this in his bedroo
m after he died. It must have been taken in the early 1960s. He was around thirty-seven or thirty-eight then.’

  Mel took the picture and angled it towards the light. It was of a fleshy, youngish man, half-turned to the camera, caught mid-conversation at a party. He had a wing of dark, jaw-length hair and sideburns, and was bringing a glass of wine to his full, smiling lips. The photograph was signed Valentine Winter in a scrawl very similar to Patrick’s own.

  ‘“Winter” was his stage name. He was my dad’s uncle,’ said Patrick, going to sit down once more. ‘Though there was only ten years between them. He was my great-grandma’s unexpected gift, you see – the much-spoiled late baby.’

  ‘He certainly doesn’t look like a farmer.’

  ‘Let’s say he was the black sheep.’ Patrick grinned.

  Mel gave a snort of laughter. ‘Nor is Valentine a typical name for a farmer ’s son.’

  ‘The story goes that he was Great-gran’s last chance at having a daughter. And he was born on the fourteenth of February. The combination was irresistible. It’s hardly surprising he turned out the way he did.’

  ‘He looks as if he enjoyed life.’

  ‘Oh, he did when he was young – the original playboy, outrageously flamboyant. The family were scandalised. He started out as a TV actor, and went on to create some very successful comedy series. Made a lot of money out of it. But he developed multiple sclerosis in the late nineteen seventies, gave it all up and moved back to Cornwall. Spent the rest of his life here all by himself. Hardly saw the family or his friends. So sad.’ Patrick dropped another log on the fire, then picked up a poker, crouching down to prod the embers. Mel watched him coax the flames into new life.

  ‘But he chose to leave the place to you,’, eyebrows raiseder of she pointed out. ‘He must have been fond of you.’

  Patrick rose and turned to look at her, the poker still in his hand, the other arm resting on the mantelpiece in a proprietorial manner, as though he belonged.

  ‘I was always a favourite of his. We understood one another at some level, had the same sense of humour. He could be difficult, bloody-minded, but to me he was always good company. He liked a gossip, and I enjoyed listening to his stories. He didn’t become incapacitated with MS until the last few years. I would drive over whenever I was home and we would look through his scrapbooks and he would talk about the old days. I can show you newscuttings of him with famous people – Barbara Windsor, Joe Orton, even the Beatles. He missed that world, but he hated being ill, losing his looks, growing old. I think he felt ashamed.’

  ‘Poor man. Irina sounded fond of him. He left her money, she told me.’

  ‘And to the nurse, yes.’ Patrick sat down once more. ‘They were devoted to him, despite his fussiness. Even when he was dying he could be charming, amusing. I was the only beneficiary in the family – not that there was much money left after the taxman had taken his tranche – just this place really.’

  Mel wanted to ask whether the rest of the family minded Patrick inheriting Merryn, but felt this question to be too intrusive.

  ‘Come on,’ Patrick said, putting down his empty glass. ‘If you’d like me to show you round we’d better do it now, before it gets any darker.’

  He led the way out of the drawing room and across the hall, where he threw open the double doors of a dining room. The huge walnut table was battered and chipped. An assortment of chairs was pushed back against the sides of the room. The walls looked like those of a classroom after the end of term, when all the work has been taken down, for it was studded by drawing pins that still held the corners of torn posters.

  ‘Soldiers were billeted here during the war. They obviously used this as their operations room,’ Patrick explained. It was almost as though the soldiers had left only yesterday. ‘It’s astonishing that the last Miss Carey left it untouched. Val hardly came in here. Sometimes he and I sat at opposite ends of the dining-room table for our meals when we fancied pretending to be grand. We would slide the salt and pepper up and down like shot glasses in a Western saloon bar and bark silly comments at one another like mad Regency squires.’

  Mel laughed.

  Patrick showed her a big office down a corridor where several dented filing cabinets sagged next to two huge desks and a wall of empty shelves.

  ‘What do you suppose this was before?’ Mel asked, gazing round. On one of the desks, Patrick had installed a computer. On the other he’d dumped half a dozen boxes of papers.

  ‘Probably the estate office. I read in the solicitor’s files that the Careys owned hundreds of acres of farmland round here. Most of it was leased out to tenant farmers, so I imagine a lot of the work was only admin, but until after the First War they kept a dozen acres to farm themselves.’

  Closing the door of the office, Patrick led Mel back up the corridor and into a small sitting room at the front of the house.

  ‘It’s lovely and sunny here in the mornings,’ he said. ‘Val used it as his den – until he was bedridden and couldn’t get downstairs.’

  The room looked as though it had last been decorated thirty years before. Orange and brown paper in a geometric design bubbled with age or damp. There was a , eyebrows raiseder of low flat sofa with wooden arms, a scallop-backed cane chair with a stained cushion and, by the fireplace, another reclining armchair, clearly the partner of the one in the drawing room. The grate was obscured by an old-fashioned, double-barred electric fire. Shelving units bearing books, photographs, an old hi-fi system and a large vinyl and tape collection filled the two alcoves.

  ‘Like being in a time warp, isn’t it?’ Patrick said, stabbing at a button on the hi-fi. The lugubrious tones of Leonard Cohen filled the air and he quickly pressed the stop button.

  ‘Weird,’ Mel agreed. She looked out of the window to where Patrick’s gleaming new ultramarine sports car brought her firmly back to the present.

  ‘You know, I think of this house,’ he said, escorting her through the kitchen to see the larder, pantry and scullery, all painted a sludgy olive green, ‘being like a dowager duchess, dreaming of the gracious past, too frail to shrug off the monstrosities of post-war decor.’

  Mel eyed the beige Formica cabinets, of the same ilk as those in the Gardener ’s Cottage and nodded. ‘All in the name of progress,’ she sighed.

  ‘Wait till you see the avocado bathroom upstairs,’ he grinned suddenly.

  Mel laughed. ‘It’s strange, isn’t it, how people reach a certain period of their lives and get stuck. Your uncle decorated this house in what was the latest fashion when he moved in and stayed with it ever after.’

  ‘The only thing he updated regularly was the television. Do you want to see upstairs or have you had enough?’

  Upstairs didn’t take long. There were six bedrooms on the first floor, sparsely furnished, and two attic rooms above.

  ‘I gave Irina some of the furniture,’ Patrick said, ‘and I moved some things over to the Gardener ’s Cottage when I decided to rent it out.’

  ‘Did anyone live there before?’

  ‘Val let it out to a local couple, until a few years before he died. But there was some argument about money and they left. Then Irina lived there for a bit with her daughter.’

  ‘And the pictures,’ Mel said, thinking about the flower paintings. ‘Where did the pictures in my living room come from?’

  ‘I found those by accident,’ said Patrick, as they walked back into the corridor, ‘all packed away in newspaper in a hidey hole in one of the attics. There was one more, which I’ve got in my bedroom. Hold on, I’ll fetch it.’

  Mel, waiting just outside the door, wondered why Patrick had taken for himself a stuffy small bedroom at the front of the house rather than, say, Uncle Val’s bigger room. The curtains were still closed, and through the crack in the door, she could see that the bed was unmade. Patrick switched on the light. A few books were sprawled across the floor, and Mel, who liked to learn about people from their choice of reading matter, peered at the titles. A litera
ry crime thriller, a politician’s autobiography and a couple of popular science bestsellers.

  ‘I like this room,’ Patrick answered her unspoken question, as he emerged bearing a canvas a yard square, ‘because it reminds me of my room when I was a kid.’ Mel followed him back into Val’s room where he propped the canvas up on the mantelpiece. They stood back in silence to look at it.

  P.T.’s seventh picture was quite different from the others, an oil painting of a young man standing in a walled garden in summer. The flowerbeds were a riot of colour and the plants so carefully painted Melspais c f could identify delphinium and lupins. A white rose rambled across an arch above a wooden gate. The young man, smiling slightly, was smartly dressed in a light jacket, waistcoat and trousers, but his white shirt was open at the neck and his head, unusually, was bare. He was holding something in one hand that might be a pen or a pencil. She stepped back a little to bring it into focus. No, she couldn’t see it clearly and this fading light was no help. She liked the painting. It glowed with summer warmth – she could almost hear the humming of bees – and the whole was dappled with sunlight falling through leaves.

  ‘What do you think?’ Patrick was saying, almost anxiously. ‘I find it . . . draws you in.’

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ Mel said. ‘There’s something about the light. It’s so uplifting – ecstatic, almost.’

  Patrick nodded, slowly. ‘That’s how it takes me, too.’ They stood in silence, studying the painting.

  ‘His clothes look Edwardian. I suppose it’s the turn of the twentieth century,’ said Mel, after a moment. ‘It’s not unlike some of the more famous Lamorna paintings.’