The Memory Garden

by Rachel Hore

  ‘I see what you mean. Where do you start to look?’

  ‘It’s got to be round here, I suppose. Though I don’t fancy ringing up all the Boases in the directory. Oh good, is that the postman?’

  The sound of a vehicle made her half-rise in her seat to see the van pull up outside the Gardener’s Cottage.

  ‘I’ll just nip down and see what he’s got,’ she said. ‘The car tax-disc might finally have arrived.’

  The postman handed her the brown envelope that she had been hoping for from the Vehicle Licensing Office, together with a small white one addressed to her in shaky biro.

  ‘Going back up to the hall, my dear?’ The postman asked. ‘Take these and save my old legs?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, grasping the pile of catalogues and magazines that he passed her and pushing them awkwardly under one arm.

  She smiled a vague goodbye and, while struggling not to drop Patrick’s post, ripped open the white envelope, pulling out the single sheet of paper inside. She unfolded it and saw at once that it was from Norah Varco.

  Dear Mel,

  I have a niece in Buryan I spoke to on the telephone last week. Jo Sennen, her name is. She thinks she knows Peter Boase’s son Richard because her friend’s daughter was courted by Richard’s son for two years. She rang me back today to confirm that he is the right Richard Boase and to give me his address. My hearing, as you know, is not too good, but Richard was a farmer up Zennor way and I heard the address as Greenacre Farm, Long Lane, nr Zennor. I hope this information is of use to you.

  Yours respectfully,

  Norah Varco

  expression on his face‘is ces

  Mel refolded the paper with a sense of triumph. She had found him, and only a few miles away, too. The village of Zennor was up on the north coast near St Ives. What an extraordinary coincidence that the letter should arrive now. She read it again. No phone number given. Should she write to Boase first to engineer a visit or look up his number in the telephone directory? The latter would be quicker, she decided.

  Tucking her letters into the back pocket of her jeans, she hefted Patrick’s post into an easier position to carry. As she did so, a piece of coloured card slid out of the pile and floated onto the path. A postcard. She picked it up and looked at the picture. A reclining nude. La Grande Odalisque by Ingres, she recognised. Painted when? She turned it over to remind herself. But the caption was obscured by a large signature – Bella, followed by several kisses.

  For a moment she stopped breathing. She looked up at the kitchen window. Was Patrick watching? No. She knew she shouldn’t but she must. She read the flamboyant handwriting quickly.

  Dearest Paddy . . . Paddy?

  I saw this and thought of you, as they say. Remember that day in the Musée d’Orsay? I’ve got news. Ring me or I’ll ring you.

  Love, Bella xxx

  She flipped the card over again and stared at the picture, that soft flawless skin, the doe eyes of the Odalisque, luscious, tempting, waiting to be found. Something else struck her. I saw this and thought of you. Patrick used that phrase occasionally. So it was their private joke, his and Bella’s.

  She stomped up to the house, shoved open the scullery door and dumped the pile of post onto Patrick’s fortunately empty plate, the postcard uppermost.

  He stared at her with a slight frown. ‘What’s up?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing,’ she answered sharply, nodding pointedly at the postcard.

  He looked at it and must have recognised instantly what it meant because he picked it up, glanced at the writing side . . . and got up to stash it in the overflowing letter-rack behind the kitchen door.

  She stared at him in astonishment. He was just goence, Mrs Varc

  Chapter 25

  The next afternoon found Mel’s car bumping down a potholed lane to a remote stone farmhouse standing lonely on the side of a hill near Zennor.

  The house had that same deserted look of many of the windswept buildings on the peninsula, as though they had long ago dispensed with the bother of keeping up appearances. Crouching firm in the face of winds and stormy weather took up all their strength. As she raised a hand to lift the door-knocker, a bolt cracked back and the door opened to reveal a stocky, white-haired man with a "; font-weight: bold; m s c for herface as weathered as his home.

  ‘Mr Boase?’ Mel said.

  ‘Come in, my dear, come in,’ he said, opening the door wider and waving her inside. She followed his unsteady, bow-legged figure into a sunny living room with whitewashed walls and a large open fireplace. The only pictures on the walls, she noticed with disappointment as she settled herself on a small sofa, were a framed Victorian sampler and two prints of country scenes. Nothing that looked to be by Pearl.

  Richard Boase lowered himself into a battered armchair by the fireplace, then made to get up once more, a dazed expression on his face.

  ‘I’m sorry, I should offer you a cup of tea . . .’

  Mel demurred quickly, offering an excuse.

  He sank back in the seat, then clasped his hands together against his chest, as though in pleading prayer. ‘My wife always . . .’ His eyes flickered to the empty armchair opposite. A needlework box stood on the small table beside it, too tidy, unused.

  Mel guessed immediately. ‘When?’ she asked gently.

  ‘She passed away three months ago,’ said Boase, studying his calloused hands, touching the overlong nails. Mel tried not to notice that his shirt wasn’t ironed.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I’m intruding on your grief. Perhaps I shouldn’t have come.’

  ‘No, no,’ he said, his tone firmer now. ‘I like to see people. My daughter, she lives in Canada. Came home for the funeral, but had to go>

  Chapter 26

  February 1914

  ‘I have to talk to you.’ Pearl had placed a fresh pot of tea on the table before Charles and began, with quiet movements, to load a tray with abandoned breakfast plates. Charles, last down to breakfast this frosty February morning, lowered his newspaper and looked at her, wary. Pearl averted her eyes under his scrutiny and continued to stack cups and saucers, then picked up the tray and waited for what seemed like a long moment for the nausea to pass. Running footsteps outside. She said, in desperate tones, ‘I must see you, please, sir.’ Then, like a cornered animal, head snapping round as the footsteps stopped. ‘Please.’

  The door knob turned.

  ‘The laurels at five,’ Charles said in a low voice. ‘If you can get away.’ The door opened and Cecily bounced in. She stopped when she saw Charles and Pearl, a secret smile on her face; then, her eyes fixed on Pearl, she crossed the room and wrapped her arms round Charles’s"; font-weight: bold; grandisDJ5 shoulders.

  ‘Please, Charley,’ she said, parodying Pearl’s beseeching tone. She knows, thought Pearl, the room starting to spin around her. But surely she couldn’t have heard, she couldn’t have heard through a closed door.

  ‘Please, Charley, you will come with us to the Pascoes’ tonight, won’t you?’ Please, Charley, please, Charley.

  ‘What’s happening at the Pascoes’, my sweet?’ said Charley, folding his paper as well as he could under Cecily’s embrace, his voice to Pearl as if at a distance or in a dream.

  ‘Oh, you know. We’ve been practising and practising. Victoria Pascoe and me and her brothers are doing our Greek tableau. And Elizabeth will be singing. Say you’ll come.’ Cecily’s high voice scraped like metal over stone.

  ‘Pearl, are you all right?’ Charles stood up, pushing Cecily aside. The tray crashed onto the table as Pearl swayed and slid to the floor.

  ‘I thought you weren’t coming.’

  ‘You’re shivering. Here, have my coat. I’m sorry, I was over at the Birches’ and forgot the time.’ The mantle of rough wool settled heavy on her shoulders, then he dropped down beside her on the stone bench and they sat in the secret darkness amongst the laurel hedges, listening to the sounds of the garden settling around them, the restless play of
wind in the branches, the rattle of a blackbird’s cry.

  ‘Are you all right? After this morning, I mean. I was worried.’

  His arm around her in the darkness was comforting. They would go away together. They’d have to, now that she knew for certain.

  ‘You’re breeding, girl, ent you?’ Jenna’s voice reverberated in her mind. When Pearl had fallen, fortunately it was Jenna who answered Charles’s urgent bell-ringing, who had summoned Jago to clear up the broken crockery, had helped Pearl upstairs.

  It felt worse if she lay down, so Pearl had sat on her bed, fighting the sick empty feeling, puzzling at the tingling in her breasts. Jenna sat opposite her on her own bed and studied her.

  ‘Your face is like pastry and you’ve a look in your eye. You’re breeding, ent you? Who? How far along is it?’

  Pearl shook her head.

  Jenna came and knelt down and grasped the girl’s arms, not ungently, and thought a minute. ‘It can’t be long. We both had our courses at New Year, remember? You had the gripes, didn’t yer? I should have noticed you’d missed.’ It was impossible in this small space not to be aware.

  ‘Who’s done this to you, girl?’ She thought a moment and said in a wobbly voice, ‘Not Jago?’

  Pearl shook her head, her eyes filling with tears.

  ‘Who then? Who? You’ve got to tell me,’ said Jenna, ‘so I can help you. I’ll think about what to do. Listen, there are ways, you know, if you don’t want it.’ She stopped. ‘It wasn’t one o’ Boase’s men?’

  ‘No.’ Pearl formed Charles’s name in her mouth but couldn’t bring herself to utter it. It would make it real. But in the end she didn’t need to say it. She staggered upright and went to her chest of drawers, pulling open the top drawer and sliding out her sketchbook. She turned the pages until she came to the picture of Charles, asleep in the studio.

  After a long moment, Jenna nodded slowly, recognition and a towards the rhododendrons.!carnger dawning in her eyes. She dropped her hands from Pearl’s arms and said savagely, ‘So it’s him. Only painting, you said. That’s what you were up to all the time. You must of thought I was daft.’

  ‘It’s not what you think. I have been painting. This . . . it hasn’t been going on for long,’ Pearl cried. ‘And we were careful.’

  ‘You’re a fool, you know that? A fool. Look, I’ll think about what you can do. If it’s not that long, maybe it’ll go by itself. Sometimes they do, you know. But you mustn’t tell anybody. Anybody, you hear? Not yet, leastways.’

  ‘Cook,’ Pearl whispered in panic. What would happen if Aunt Dolly guessed? Would she go straight to the mistress? And what about Cecily? She might be too young to interpret the evidence, but she might have seen or heard something that, if she repeated it to anyone . . .

  ‘Cook don’t need to know yet, though she might guess, she don’t miss much. Listen, I’ll tell her it’s the guts ache. Have you been sick?’

  ‘No, but it feels bad all the time, like I’m going to.’

  ‘Stay up here for a bit then. I’ll tell her it’s your guts.’

  An hour later, still dizzy but slightly less nauseous, Pearl had hidden her sketchbook away, this time in the wall cupboard she had found behind her bed, crept downstairs and gone back to her tasks. Mrs Roberts regarded her with a thoughtful look in her eye but, for the moment, seemed to accept Jenna’s explanation of a stomach-ache. ‘Keep away from the food or you’ll give it to the rest of us,’ was her only comment.

  Pearl turned Jenna’s words over in her mind. Do something about it. That meant get rid of it. She had heard stories. Jenna had told her that her mother had deliberately miscarried a baby once before her father became so ill. Even then they couldn’t afford another mouth to feed.

  But perhaps, just perhaps it would work out. She would go away with Charles after all . . .

  ‘I reckon I’m having a baby,’ she whispered to him now.

  ‘What?’ he said, the arm dropping from her shoulder. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m having a baby.’ It became more horribly real as she said it. Suddenly she saw it all clearly. She couldn’t stay. She would lose her position. What would happen to her then? She didn’t know for sure, but they’d likely send her away, take the baby from her and she would have to start again somewhere else. Whichever way she looked at it, she would have to leave Merryn, this place which had become home, where she was happy. How could she have thrown that happiness away?

  ‘Are you sure?’ he hissed. ‘How can you be? We tried . . .’

  ‘I know,’ she cried out. ‘But it didn’t work, did it? And now we’ll have to go away.’

  Charles leaped to his feet, and she had to snatch at the coat to stop it falling. Then he sat down again and she heard him rake his nails across his bristly jaw in the darkness and sigh.

  ‘Pearl? Pearl! I’ll skin you. Where is the girl when I need her?’ Mrs Roberts’s voice carried out across the garden, half-snatched away by the wind.

  ‘I must go,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’ His voice was dull.

  She stood up, letting the coat fall, and turned to him, leaning her knees against his. His arms encircled her thi"; font-weight: bold; Iu of ghs and he pulled her towards him, burying his face in her abdomen. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ he breathed. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She wrapped her arms around his head, rubbing her cheek against his silky hair, the part of him she loved most, his beautiful hair and his vulnerable mouth. She forced his head up towards her now and kissed that mouth, tasting salt and a faint, masculine hint of smoke. Her womb contracted with desire and she gasped as a tender pain rushed through her breasts.

  ‘Can I see you on Sunday?’ she said, releasing him. The stable studio was freezing cold now, but Charles had rigged up an oil heater there. They could only work until the daylight faded.

  ‘Pearl? Where in God’s name . . .?’ Jago’s voice now. Pearl felt her way back through the laurels up to the lawn, where the soft oil lights from the house picked out the path. By the Flower Garden, she stumbled. Suddenly a black shape loomed, a hand reached out, catching her. Jago? No.

  ‘Whoa, girl.’ Mr Boase then, steadying her as he might a frightened pony. A basket bumped against her hip; she inhaled the rich smells of earth and vegetable and her gorge rose.

  ‘Here, take these with you,’ he said. ‘You came to ask me, remember?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tell them you were waiting for these,’ he said.

  She grasped his meaning and took the basket, calmer now. ‘Oh. Yes. Thank you,’ moved past him and hurried across to the Hall.

  ‘Where you been, girl?’ said Jago roughly from the scullery doorway, then his lamplight fell on the basket of potatoes.

  ‘Who asked you to get them?’ said Cook from the stove, as they walked into the steam-filled kitchen. ‘Though come to think, a few more will be useful.’

  ‘We can go away. I can’t stay, can I?’ Her voice rose, shaky.

  ‘Pearl, listen to me. We cannot go away together. Don’t you see? We have no money to go gallivanting off abroad.’

  ‘But what do I do?’ Pearl, trembling, tearful, stared into the dusty chaos of paper and cloth and canvas on the floor of the studio as though seeing her own future. And the mermaid. Where has the mermaid gone? Someone had searched her possessions – not Jenna, it couldn’t have been Jenna. Jenna was her friend.

  Charles stood at the heater, his back turned to P"VF2IL">&lsquo

  Chapter 27

  My sister is an artist. Boase’s words rang in Mel’s head as she steered the car expression on his facehisDJ5 back down the unmade lane and joined the narrow road that wound its way across the desolate countryside to Lamorna. The more she thought about the revelation, the more she was gripped by a sense of rightness. Pearl herself had not managed to fulfil her ambition, but the granddaughter she never met somehow had. And, even better, Ann Boase – she used her maiden name – had more of her grandmother’s pictures. Suddenly Pearl’s wh
ole story was opening up. Mel must organise a trip to London as soon as she could.

  London. Another thought arose unbidden. Here she was at the end of July, the start of term only – what – seven, eight, weeks away? Too far away to think about. But it wasn’t really. She and Patrick would have to talk about it sometime. She would make him.

  The holiday traffic on the main road slowed her down and by the time she arrived back at the Gardener’s Cottage it was late afternoon. Making herself a mug of tea, she took it outside to sit in the sunshine. Because the air was thrumming with the distant sound of holiday traffic, she didn’t pick out the well-mannered engine of a Mercedes purring up the front drive of Merryn Hall.

  A man’s voice – deep, confident – called, ‘Hello?’ and she watched him come round the side of the cottage, one hand shading his eyes against the sun.

  She stood up, wondering who he was. He was well-dressed in an expensive-looking jacket and trousers, polished brown brogues. Fiftyish, she guessed, noting the greying dark hair well receded from his handsome forehead. Someone Patrick knew, she supposed.

  ‘Can I help?’ she said.

  ‘Sorry to trespass, but just thought I’d check. I was looking for Mr Winterton, and I didn’t get any answer from the house.’

  ‘He should be back from the office any minute.’

  The man looked slightly bemused. ‘The office?’ he said. ‘I imagined he was retired, somehow.’

  ‘No . . .’ she said uncertainly. ‘Look, are you sure I can’t help? My name is Melanie Pentreath.’

  ‘The name’s Weldon. Greg Weldon.’ He put out his hand. A faint bell began to ring in Mel’s head. Was he a friend of Patrick’s? Had Patrick mentioned him? His forehead was glistening with perspiration. He pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at his face.

  ‘Have you come far?’

  ‘London. Started early this morning.’

  ‘Look, I’ll get you a drink while you wait. Patrick shouldn’t be long. I’m a friend of his, by the way.’