The Memory Garden

by Rachel Hore

  He opted for ginger beer and sat with her in the garden.

  ‘I hadn’t thought of Mr Winterton still working. He had been described to me as elderly.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mel, with a flash of understanding. ‘The old man. Were you looking for Val Winterton?’

  ‘Is that his name, Val? You said Patrick just now.’

  ‘Yes, Patrick lives here now. He inherited the house from Val. Didn’t you know? Val died last year.’

  ‘Ah.’ The man looked anxious.

  ‘I’m sorry if it’s a shock,’ Mel said, wondering who on earth this man was and why he didn’t know about Val. ‘Did you know him well?’ He couldn’t have done if he didn’t even know Val’s first name.

  ‘Er, no, not at all. In fact, it’s not really a Winterton I was looking for. It’s my wife.’"; font-weight: bold; Anis ces

  ‘Your wife?’ Suddenly she remembered where she had heard the name Greg recently. Irina.

  ‘And my daughter. Are they still here? Irina and Lana?’

  Mel’s hand went to the pendant at her neck. Her face must have betrayed her unease, because he said in a low, urgent voice, ‘You do know them, don’t you?’

  ‘I – er.’ What should she say? ‘I – yes.’ The truth would be simplest.

  ‘Where are they? Do they still live here? Please tell me.’

  ‘How do you know they came here?’ she blurted out, playing for time.

  Greg Weldon regarded her as though assessing how much she knew. He seemed to decide to play it safe. ‘Oh, she has written to me. She might have told you, we are . . . separated. But I have to talk to her. It’s three years since I’ve seen my child. Do they still live here?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Mel. At least that part of the truth didn’t endanger Irina. ‘But – well, I do know her slightly. I’m not sure that she wants to see you.’ Her mind was working quickly. How had Greg discovered Irina was in Lamorna when Irina had only written with a Post Office box number?

  His demeanour changed then, for a second nakedly vulnerable, then hard. He drained his glass and, standing up, handed it to her.

  ‘Thank you, that was most welcome. Well, Ms Pentreath, it seems you have already decided about me.’

  Mel stood up too and faced him. Suddenly she saw exactly what Irina had meant. He was a man you should not cross lightly – powerful, used to getting his own way.

  He faced her, arms folded. ‘Irina has kept my daughter from me without cause for several years now. And I will search for them until I find them. Do they still live close by? I think they must do, from the letter.’

  Mel toyed with the idea of lying but gave it up straightaway. Greg was the sort of man who would spot a lie a mile off.

  ‘I’m afraid I won’t tell you any more. If you want to wait for Patrick and speak to him, that’s fine, but otherwise I’d really advise you to go back to London. Perhaps I can tell Irina you’ve been looking for her.’

  ‘And away she will fly . . .’ said Greg Weldon softly. ‘I don’t think I need to trouble Mr Winterton. Is he the old man’s son, then? My source was a little light on facts.’

  ‘His nephew.’

  He nodded. ‘Well, good day. And thank you again for the refreshment.’ He touched his thumb to his forehead as though he were wearing a hat, an old-fashioned courtesy that belied his anger, and walked up the slope, around the Hall, and was gone.

  Mel sat down in a state of turmoil. Then stood up again. Irina. She had to warn her.

  Irina’s home phone rang several times, then clicked onto message mode. ‘Irina, this is Mel,’ Mel said fiercely. ‘This is to warn you, your husband has been here looking for you. I haven’t told him where you are, of course. Ring me.’ She put down the phone and looked at her watch. Five-thirty. She picked up the handset again and with her other hand riffled through her diary until she found a number scrawled against the name Carrie. The phone in the hotel was answered on the fifth ring. A man’s voice.

  ‘Is that you, Matt?’ she asked. ‘It’s me – Mel.’

  ‘Hello, how are you?’ came Matt’s voice. Warm,"; font-weight: bold; ">‘u of friendly again, good old Matt.

  ‘Is Irina there?’

  ‘Sorry? Just a moment, the other phone’s ringing.’

  She heard him pick up another call and some discussion ensued. He finished that call, then she heard him say, ‘Good evening, can I help you?’ and a man’s voice, deep, polite, asked, ‘I wondered if you had a room for tonight.’ It was Greg Weldon.

  What should she do? She shouted, ‘Matt!’ The receiver was picked up and she heard Matt say to Greg, ‘Just one moment, sir.’ Then he said down the phone, ‘I think she’s upstairs. Do you want to speak to her? I can go and find her in a moment, when I’m less busy.’

  ‘Matt, I can’t explain now, but that man who’s come – you mustn’t let him know where Irina is, mustn’t let him see her.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think the man there in front of you is Irina’s husband. And she doesn’t want to see him. You mustn’t tell him where she is.’

  ‘Right, right, certainly,’ he said, and his changed tone caused her a wave of relief. ‘I’ll hand over the message and I’m sure my mother will ring you back later. Goodbye.’

  ‘What did you do?’ she breathed when Matt called back half an hour later.

  ‘Simple,’ he said. ‘I just said that we didn’t have a room. Sent him up to Mrs Penhaligon’s at Buryan. A shame though, because we’d just had a cancellation, but there we are.’

  ‘Matt, thank you. Have you seen Irina?’

  ‘Yes, of course. And I’ve told her. Heck, Mel, I had no idea about this situation. I thought she must be divorced or something but this sounds like some soap opera plot.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. How did she react?’

  ‘Well, very shocked.’

  ‘You didn’t send her home, did you? He’ll find her there – someone will tell him.’

  ‘Of course not. When the other receptionist gets here I’ll take Irina to fetch Lana from her friend’s. They can stay here for a bit, maybe, while she decides what to do. She’s just upstairs calling Amber’s mum. Look, Mel,’ he lowered his voice, ‘she hasn’t told me much. Do you know what it was all about?’

  ‘No, not entirely. Only a bit and – well, it sounds unkind, but I’m not sure she’s told the complete story. Certain things don’t tie up.’

  ‘Okay. Look, I’ve got to go now. With you in a moment, madam, just finishing this call.’

  ‘I’ll ring later on,’ said Mel, then impulsively, ‘bring them here if you need to.’

  ‘Great. Okay, bye.’

  ‘How is she?’ Mel half-rose as Irina came into the drawing room at Merryn later that night.

  Irina stood twisting her hands and said, ‘She sleeps now.’

  Matt had brought Irina and her daughter to Merryn Hall as the safest place Irina could think of just now, then left, promising to come back after dinner was over at the hotel.

  ‘Mum’s not been too well today. She won’t be able to manage if I don’t go back.’

  Explaining the situation to Lana had proved beyond Irina’s capabilities. First of all she had tried to say#">er of nothing of Greg’s arrival. ‘I thought it would be nice to stay with Patrick for a little while. For a change.’ Even Mel had been embarrassed hearing Irina lie so blatantly. Lana had seen through that story straight away.

  ‘Something’s wrong, isn’t it, Mummy? It’s something to do with Daddy, isn’t it? I heard you talking to Matt.’

  ‘Yes. He has come here, but we can’t see him.’

  ‘But why can’t I see Daddy? I want to see him.’

  ‘Lana.’ Irina tried to put her arms around her daughter, but Lana pushed her away.

  ‘You never let me see him. I want to see him.’ Lana’s whinge rose into a wail.

  ‘Lana.’ Irina tried to sound firm, but her voice wobbled. ‘I have told you so many times. Your father loves you, I’m sure he loves you, but I do
not love him and I cannot be with him. He has not been kind to me.’

  ‘But I want to see him.’

  Lana looked at Mel and said in a low voice, ‘They were close, you see. He gave her presents. She was his little princess. It’s very hard for her.’

  Mel stared at Irina, restrained by Lana’s listening ears from asking any of the multitude of questions swirling in her mind.

  ‘I’ll go and see about the beds,’ she muttered, and fled the room. ‘Are there more sheets somewhere?’ she asked Patrick, who was keeping out of the way in the kitchen, cooking supper.

  He frowned as he turned pieces of chicken in the pan. ‘Try the old chest on the landing if you can’t find any in the airing cupboard. How is it going in there?’

  ‘Badly. It doesn’t look very simple to me. I know it’s always impossible to tell what someone else’s marriage is like from the inside, but Irina has run off with Lana and effectively cut her off from her father. It doesn’t seem quite right.’

  ‘Why would she have done that?’

  ‘I don’t know, except she’s obviously afraid of Greg. From what she said just now I don’t think Greg mistreated Lana. Lana sounds really fond of him. I suppose Irina believes Greg would take the child from her, that she wouldn’t be allowed to see her.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Patrick opened an oven door and, with a fork, prodded the pudding baking inside. ‘Wonder if there was a legal arrangement . . .’

  At this moment, they both froze as the sound of sobbing reached their ears.

  ‘Lana!’ they heard Irina shout, this followed by running footsteps in the hall, up the stairs.

  Mel moved into the hall at the same time as Irina emerged from the drawing room next door. Irina raised her hands in a gesture of hopelessness. ‘She hates me,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘Says I’ve ruined her life.’

  ‘Would you like me to try to talk to her?’ Mel offered. ‘Not that I’m sure what to say.’

  ‘Thank you, but it’s best to leave her to cool down. She’ll have gone up to her old room. I’ll follow her in a minute.’

  Patrick put his head out of the kitchen. ‘Supper’s ready whenever. Glass of wine?’

  ‘A large one, I think, please.’ Irina was looking exhausted. She fumbled in her bag for a packet of cigarettes. ‘Look, do you mind?’ she asked in a desperate tone.

  Patrick nodded amused assent.

  Mel ran towards the rhododendrons.Nois up the stairs two at a time, which did little to relieve her feelings of frustration, and pulled open the door of the airing cupboard. Whilst she sorted through the piles of old curtains, towels and bedspreads for suitable bedding, she felt someone watching her and turned to see a dejected figure standing in a bedroom doorway.

  ‘I’ll pop these on the bed for you,’ she told Lana. The girl shrugged and wandered back into the room.

  ‘Will you help me? Here, catch this end.’ Lana picked up a sheet corner with two fingers and draped it over the bed in a listless movement.

  ‘Don’t be too hard on your mum,’ Mel said gently, as she straightened the sheet and tucked in the edges. ‘She’s only trying to do the best for you.’

  Lana mumbled something. ‘Sorry?’ Mel said.

  The girl slumped down on the half-made bed and drew an arm tiredly across her face. ‘I want my daddy, but she won’t let me.’ She fell silent.

  Mel crouched down beside her. ‘I am sure it can be sorted out, darling. Don’t worry. Come and have some supper and then we’ll get you to bed.’

  But as she followed Lana slowly down the stairs she hoped she hadn’t made an empty promise.

  ‘She cried until she fell asleep,’ Irina said, where she sat hunched miserably on a sofa. She had been restless all evening, smoking cigarette after cigarette and starting at every sound from outside, staring anxiously out of the windows.

  ‘It sounds as though she really misses her father,’ Mel said, just as Patrick came into the room and sat down in an armchair.

  Irina wouldn’t look at her. ‘Yes, I know,’ she said roughly.

  ‘Is there no way you can sort it out between you, you and Greg?’ Mel went on. ‘Couldn’t your solicitor help you?’

  Irina reached again for her cigarettes, fumbled them and the packet fell to the floor. She cursed in her own language and picked them up.

  ‘That is the trouble. Greg is supposed to see the child half the time. He was told to buy me a house in London and to pay money to keep us. But he threatened me. Said he would take Lana from me unless I stopped it all and came back. So . . . I had to keep her away from him.’

  ‘Can he do that – take her away, I mean? Why did you believe him?’ Was Irina telling the full story even now, Mel wondered.

  ‘You don’t know Greg.’ The other woman shook her head sadly. ‘He does what he wants.’

  What about what Lana wants? thought Mel, looking meaningfully at Patrick.

  ‘How did you come to marry him, Irina?’ Patrick asked. ‘There must have been a time when you weren’t frightened of him.’

  Mel remembered the powerful stance of Greg’s body, his direct, ruthless gaze.

  Irina finally lit her cigarette, took a long drag and said, ‘Yes, a bit, but I didn’t know what else to do. You know I come from Dubrovnik?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Mel. ‘I saw the photograph of your hotel. You said your brother runs it now.’

  ‘I can never go back there. I never want to see my brother again. Never. I will tell it to you. I was twenty-four when it happened. I had started work as a teacher and my fiancé, Goran, we were saving to get married. Goran was a journalist on a political paper. Unfortunately, his newspaper had opinions that many Catholics, and that included my towards the rhododendrons.Nois brother, did not like. When the fighting began, Goran and the others on his paper became targets. It was not safe to be with him where he was hiding and my parents were very worried for me. My brother was angry that I still intended to marry Goran. But I tell you, I did not agree with everything my fiancé wrote, but he wating brow, &ls

  Chapter 28

  April 1914

  ‘Is it true, girl, what they’re saying? It’s no good lying to me.’ Shocked into immobility, Pearl finally dragged her gaze from Mrs Carey’s half-dressed hair to meet her furious eyes in the dressing-table mirror.

  ‘Yes,’ she said hoarsely, making to continue to brush the woman’s hair.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Carey.’ The mistress did not wait for Pearl to correct herself, but half-rose and snatched the hairbrush from her. Her voice rose sharply. ‘And you blame my nephew for it, I gather?’

  ‘No, I didn’t say that, mam, Mrs Carey!’ Pearl cried out. How on earth had the mistress known that, and where in this deepest trouble had she, Pearl, summoned the strength to protect him?

  ‘It is him though, isn’t it? Don’t think I don’t know. I have my sources, you know.’

  Cecily. She thought of the spying girl. It could only be Cecily who had told her mother, who had searched her possessions and stolen her mermaid.

  ‘You wretch. You, with your big eyes and your airs above your station. We’ve all been wrong about you. Well, they say it’s the quiet ones you have to watch, don’t they? Don’t they?’ She stood, hands on hips, a picture of rage, but slightly ridiculous with her hair on one side in pins and the other tumbling around her shoulders.

  ‘He . . . he said we could go away together.’ Pearl’s howl was heart-wrenching.

  ‘Go away together? What a simply ridiculous idea.’ The woman threw the hairbrush onto the rug. ‘Where would you have gone away to, I ask you? And who would pay for it all? He couldn’t have expected a penny from us and I can’t think of anyone else who would help him after cutting himself off from family and friends in such a low, despicable manner.’

  Pearl felt the"; font-weight: bold; GQ in front spit of ‘despicable’ on her cheek and flinched.

  ‘How far on is it?’ her mistress snapped. ‘This . . . baby.’

  ‘Might be three mo
nths now. My courses—’

  ‘Spare me the details. Three months. I suppose you’ve tried . . . yes, well.’

  ‘I have, mam, yes.’ Pearl stared at the floor. ‘It wasn’t any good.’

  The anger seemed to go out of Mrs Carey suddenly, and a shrewd, calculating look came over her face instead. She sat back on her chair again and gestured to Pearl to continue with her hair.

  ‘Well, I suppose we’ve time to think about it.’ Pearl’s hand froze halfway, reaching down for the thrown hairbrush. ‘You’ll have to go, of course.’

  Pearl’s eyes filled with sudden tears. ‘Yes, mam,’ she whispered. Then said, ‘I’ve nowhere to go. Nowhere.’

  ‘Well, you should have thought about that earlier,’ Mrs Carey said viciously. Then, seeing the shock and distress in the maid’s eyes, added more gently, ‘I’ll have to find out what happens in these cases. The important thing is that nobody outside these walls learns a thing.’

  ‘Charles? Master Charles?’ The stable door was padlocked but Pearl hammered on it anyway. It was useless. Where was he? She had tried his bedroom, hurried round all the rooms downstairs.

  A shadow fell across the garden. She looked up, shivering in the sudden coolness, to see a veil of dark cloud cover the sun.

  The garden – she must try the garden. She turned and began to run down the path past the house, her heart banging in her chest, her head reeling. She tried the summerhouse first. It was deserted but for a book of poems by Robert Kernow forgotten, dusty, on a chair. She picked it up and flicked the pages, remembering Charles reading her the purple descriptions of the Cornish landscape and the passionate repressed spirit of the people.

  Throwing down the book, with such force it bounced onto the floor, she ran outside. With her skirt bunched up to dodge the rose thorns that reached out to snag her, she slipped through the gap into the laurel maze. The seat was empty, and her panic grew. Down to the ravine she ran, then back up the path past the fountain, her breath rasping in her throat, the sky darkening like black ash now overhead. Thunder rumbled.

  She halted, looking round madly. No one in the Vegetable Garden. Thunder crashed suddenly and she jumped fair out of her skin. A silence, then every bird in the garden started as one, calling warning.