The Memory Garden

by Rachel Hore

  It was peaceful sitting here, listening to the birds and the sound of Peter and the miller’s boy playing soldiers down the garden. The fresh green of the peas against the white bowl pleased her, as did the cool smooth feel of the inside of the pods. A ladybird glowed red against light green as it negotiated its way over the peas in their bowl, like a child across boulders on the shoreline. How would she paint that green? A white wash underneath could make it glow with life, she was thinking, when a slight noise – metal on stone – made her look up.

  John was up near the Hall. He had propped his hoe against the wall and now crouched down to pick up something from the ground. Whatever it was, he held it gently cupped in his hands. She watched as he came across the lawn towards her. His hair was silvernother, about

  now, but thick and glossy against skin as brown as an acorn. So tall and broad, yet so tender towards whatever he carried. Something moved in her throat. Desire.

  He came near and she was acutely aware of him, the warmth of his body, the thick hair on his arms, the sweat beading on his collarbone where his shirt gaped open. He carried a small white bird, she saw.

  ‘Is it dead?’

  ‘There’s a heartbeat, but very faint and fast,’ he said. ‘It’s stunned. My the sun off the window.’"; font-weight: bold; . et tree surgeon

  ‘What bird is it, John?’

  He shrugged. ‘Looks like a blackbird.’

  ‘But it’s white.’

  ‘Aye.’

  She put out a finger and stroked the top of its head. Its eyes were slits. After a momenaybe blinded b

  Author’s Note

  Until the middle of the nineteenth century and the construction of the London to Penzance railway line, Cornwall was effectively detached from the rest of the UK. With the trains came tourism and with tourism came the artists. The nucleus of painters who settled around the fishing village of Newlyn after 1870 worked in a distinct style, eschewing pretty landscapes for the portrayal of ordinary Cornish people at home and work, in tragedy and joy, with a sympathetic realism that impressed critics and public alike. Among them were Stanhope Forbes and his wife Elizabeth, Thomas and Caroline Gotch, Charles Walter Simpson and Norman Garstin. They formed a close but constantly replenished social group whose artists, both male and female, produced work of equal quality.

  Around 1900, a new generation began to visit Lamorna, a secluded wooded valley several miles west from Newlyn. Laura and Harold Knight, Samuel John ‘Lamorna’ Birch, Dod and Ernest Procter, Alfred Munnings and, later, Augustus John, were more influenced by Impressionism in their choice of subject and style, moving away from the realist tableaux of the Newlyn tradition to capture light, colour and landscape. Both groups helped establish Cornwall as a land of artists, and their sense of freedom and invention contributed significantly to British art of the period.

  The following publications have partic"; font-weight: bold; 1CQ in frontularly informed the writing of this novel: Oil Paint and Grease Paint by Dame Laura Knight, The Shining Sands: Artists in Newlyn and St Ives 1880–1930 by Tom Cross, Five Women Painters by Teresa Grimes, Judith Collins and Oriana Baddeley. Any mistakes in this novel are undoubtedly my own.

  The Lamorna Valley retains its breathtaking and mysterious beauty, but I must apologise for taking slight liberties with its geography for fictional purposes. Merryn Hall and its inhabitants past and present exist only within these pages. So too does Carrie’s hotel and Jim and Irina’s cottages. Sadly, the community no longer has a Post Office-cum-stores, though the Cove café and gift shop near the quay are definitely worth a visit.

  Thanks are due to a number of people who have advised or otherwise helped me during the writing of The Memory Garden: Tamsin Mallett and David Thomas, archivists at the Cornwall Record Office and absolute mines of information; Paul and Amanda Hook, whose lovely cottage I stayed in at Kemyel Wartha; Barbara and Dick Waterson of Trewoofe Orchard and Maryella Pigott, who showed me their beautiful Lamorna gardens. Juliet Bamber corrected my worst gardening inaccuracies; Dr Hilary Johnson gave excellent editorial advice, and Bob Mitchell is still lending me his laptop.

  Great thanks are due to my agent Sheila Crowley and her colleagues at A.P. Watt, to my editor Suzanne Baboneau, copy editor Joan Deitch, junior editor Libby Vernon, publicist Sue Stephens, and the rest of the team at Simon & Schuster.

  Finally, thank you Felix, Benjy and Leo who light up my life, and David, to whom this book is dedicated.

  Read on for an extract from

  bestselling author Rachel Hore

  The Silent Tide

  Chapter 1

  Emily

  London, the present

  Berkeley Square, Mayfair. A November evening, twilight fading into darkness. Street lights glowing in the misty air. In the garden at the ce"; font-weight: bold; e.Q in frontntre, the branches of great trees formed filigreed shapes of black and silver, from which cries of roosting birds contended with the grind and roar of traffic. At this hour people passed through the square on their way somewhere else, huddled warm in coats and scarves, or shivering in short skirts and too-thin jackets. Those heading for Tube station or bus stop walked purposefully, eyes down, dodging the laughing groups that drifted towards wine bar or pub. It was a Friday night and London’s offices were emptying fast.

  On the east side of the square, next door to an art gallery, stood a Georgian building, five or six storeys of dark red brick. If any of the people passing had glanced up they’d have seen the slender figure of a young woman sitting at a second-floor window. The light from her desk lamp picked up fiery glints in her feathery brown hair. She was reading a manuscript and eating an apple. From time to time she glanced out across the square. But she did not see the slumbering garden or the lambent lights or the delicate rain beginning to streak the window. Her thoughts lay in a far country of the imagination.

  There was something timeless about this girl, this scene. It might have been the present, or it might have been many years ago, sixty or seventy perhaps, for there was a 1950s feel to the round collar of her ivory blouse, the pretty cardigan and the stylish cut of her high fringe. She finished the apple and turned from the window, and for a moment it was impossible to tell whether she was typing on a computer keyboard or an old manual typewriter. Her small pointed face was grave, full lips parted, kohl-lined blue eyes dreamy, her gaze intent as she concentrated on her work. It was an expressive face: she frowned as she read, shook her head, wrinkled her short straight nose, then leaned back in her chair, hands clasped behind her head as though lost again in a world beyond the confines of office walls.

  Emily was actually thinking she was hungry.

  Her office at Parchment Press was deserted, she alone still at her workstation, one of several pens in the square high-ceilinged room. She’d been lucky to be given a desk by the window, especially since she was new. Many of the other editors strained their eyes under artificial light, and only a few, the most senior, had offices to themselves.

  Everyone at Parchment was overworked and often stayed late, though rarely on a Friday. Emily, however, was waiting for her boyfriend, Matthew. He had promised to meet her at six-thirty, but it had already gone seven and there was still no sign, which meant they’d have no time for a snack before the poetry book launch. Her mind began to thrum with anxiety. This was not unusual these days where Matthew was concerned.

  She reached down for another package from the untidy stack on the floor and glanced at the label. It was her turn this week to deal with the unsolicited scripts. Most aspiring writers sent them by email these days, and she wondered why these few still bothered to send them in the post. Perhaps they sensed it was too easy to delete an email. A parcel was unignorable. This one was addressed uninspiringly to The Parchment Publisher in sloppy block capitals, and when she pulled out the manuscript inside, her nose wrinkled at the reek of stale smoke. She scanned the writer’s covering letter with distaste, balked at the trumpeted self-praise picked out in luminous green pen, then turned
without hope to the first page, thinking maybe, just maybe, she might catch a voice, some pulse of life in the prose. There was none. She skipped to the middle to confirm that her search was in vain, then laid the script on the desk and began to type. Five minutes later, the offending item was back in its padded bag, readdressed. The author"; font-weight: bold; ro. is’s own postage stamps appeared to gleam at her accusingly.

  A picture came into her head of an ill-nourished man with nicotine-stained fingers reading her polite but firm refusal and uttering a cry of despair. At twenty-eight, after six years in the business, she still hated turning books down. She knew about the months, even years, some writers put into their work, the tender yearnings with which they sent it out into the world. But so many were not destined to succeed. She brushed some dust off her skirt and picked up the next package, resolved to harden her heart.

  After sealing the final parcel she checked her phone. Seven-thirty. Still nothing from Matthew, no answer to her enquiring texts. She slicked on some lip gloss, pulled on a red coat, then went to the window, leaning her forehead against the cold glass as she peered out into the darkness, hoping to see a tall lean figure, long scarf flying, striding across the square, but there was only an old man taking an elderly Labrador for its evening constitutional.

  She sighed, slipped her tote bag on her shoulder and scooped up the parcels for posting under one arm, which left her free to haul open the heavy fire door with the other.

  Out in the lobby, the dim light from an antique chandelier flickered like candleflame, casting sinister shadows on a row of closed doors. She must be the only person left in the building, she thought uneasily. An empty post trolley had been abandoned by the lift and she stowed the packages in it. If only Matthew would hurry up. She would nip to the loo, then go and wait downstairs. As she walked across the lobby, she gave the wire post-racks an automatic glance, but the compartment with her name on it was empty.

  When she emerged from the cloakroom a moment later, she was surprised to see the lift doors open. She caught a sideways glimpse of a woman inside – middle-aged, laden with bags – before they shut. Whoever she might have been, and there was no spark of recognition, it was plain that Emily wasn’t the only soul working late after all. The thought was comforting.

  Passing the pigeonholes on the way back to her desk, she paused. There was something in hers after all, pushed to the back. Common sense told her to leave it till Monday, but something made her reach in and pick it up.

  It was a book, a small, worn hardback with yellowed, rough-cut pages and a jacket of cheap, unvarnished paper. It felt light and warm to the touch and she liked the way it fitted snugly in her hand. Who had left it for her and why? The picture on the front was a simple line-drawing in white on a dark, patterned background. It was of a heraldic shield with a plane flying across it. The plane must be in trouble, for the lettering of the title had been forged out of smoke swirling from the fuselage. Now she could make out the words Coming Home, which the damaged plane looked as though it wouldn’t be. The helpful words A Novel were printed beneath the shield, but the jacket had been ripped at the bottom and the author’s name was unreadable.

  Emily was puzzled. Perhaps the book was meant for someone else – Gillian, her boss, for instance, whose cubbyhole above hers was, as always, overflowing? But when she angled the book to study the spine, she knew with a little shock that it was for her, after all. The author’s name was Hugh Morton.

  She moved nearer the chandelier to study the photograph on the back of the jacket. It was a monochrome portrait of Morton as an attractive young man; hard to believe he’d once looked like that, given the cragged-up, bulldog personage of his later years in the images that had dominated the obituaries of him. This portrait must have been taken in his late twenties, before he became a packet of cigarettesNois well known, maybe before he published the phenomenal bestseller The Silent Tide. She considered the title again, Coming Home. He had written so many novels, but she didn’t recall this one. She checked the publisher’s logo on the spine – an M and an H, intertwined. McKinnon & Holt, it said underneath. She’d never heard of them. One of many publishers that had come and gone over the years.

  She turned to the first page and stared. Under the title and the author’s name was something scrawled in bold, black pen strokes. In the dim light it took a moment to work out what it said.

  ‘“To Isabel, who makes everything possible,” she read out loud. “With kind regards, Hugh Morton.”’

  Isabel. As she said the name the light overhead flickered, making the shadows dance. She wondered who Isabel might be.

  Her eye moved to the bottom of the page where there was a date, 1949. Several years before The Silent Tide then, which she vaguely remembered was 1953. That was the book everyone spoke of when Hugh Morton was mentioned, the novel the day in he

  Chapter 2

  Isabel

  London, November 1948

  The petite redhead dressed in sherry brown hefted her suitcase off the bus on Earl’s Court Road and shivered as a bitter wind caught her. She stopped to wrap her scarf more tightly round her neck and glanced about, unsure of her way. People flowed round her with eyes cast down, too busy picking their way across fractured pavements to stop for yet another refugee. Above, pewter-coloured clouds hung sullen with rain.

  Nearby, a skinny youth selling newspapers breathed into his cupped hands to warm them.

  ‘Excuse me, do you know Mimosa Road?’ she asked him.

  ‘Nex’ left, Miss, and along a bit,’ came the mumbled reply.

  Thanking him, she picked up the heavy case and set off in the direction he had indicated, but the labyrinth of side streets where she found herself had no signs and she had to ask the way again, this time of a young mother with a toddler straining on its reins. Eventually she found herself on the doorstep of a handsome red-brick Victorian villa, one of the few still whole in a bomb-damaged terrace. It had to be the right house: someone had fastened a strip of card with a hand-scrawled 32 above the door, where a glass fanlight must once have been.

  She hesitated, wondering not for the first time if she’d been rash to come. Since the alternative was to return home defeated, she raised the door knocker. It fell with a loud bright sound. While she waited, the worries chased through her mind. Suppose her aunt was away? Or didn’t live here any more? She wished she’d had the sense to telephone ahead.

  The door flew open to reveal not Aunt Penelope, but a wiry, flat-chested woman in a shabby overall, wielding a carpet beater. She had clearly been interrupted in her task for she was breathing hard, and strands of thin, iron-coloured hair escaped an untidy knot at her nape. From the expression on her face, it was plain that finding a strange young woman with a suitcase on the doorstep was an unwelcome interruption.

  ‘Yes?’ the woman snapped.

  ‘I’m looking for Mrs Tyler,’ the girl said, in as firm a voice as she could muster.

  The woman studied her with a suspicious eye. ‘You sellin’ something?’ she asked.

  ‘Certainly not,’ said the girl, drawing herself up to her full five feet two, glad that she’d taken trouble with her appearance before setting out. Not only had she purloined her mother’s best hat, but also the precious remnants of a coral lipstick. This, she had been pleased to see in the mirror of the Ladies at Charing Cross station, suited her creamy skin, auburn hair and brown eyes to perfection.

  The woman’s mouth set in a hard thin line. "; font-weight: bold; feelingis ces‘This is Mrs Tyler’s residence,’ she said, ‘but she ain’t here. Who might you be, Miss?’

  ‘Isabel Barber. Mrs Tyler’s niece.’ The woman’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. Isabel added less confidently, ‘Please, may I come in? It’s awfully cold.’

  ‘I s’pose you’ll ’ave to,’ the woman sighed, opening the door wide. ‘Wait in the parlour with the other one.’

  Wondering who ‘the other one’ might be, Isabel left her case in the hall and the woman showed her into
a chilly, over-stuffed sitting room at the front of the house that smelled strongly of coal-dust and wet dog. There, a small dapper man was struggling to secure a sheet of newspaper across the fireplace. He looked round at her entrance with an expectant expression, but seeing only Isabel, rearranged his face into a polite smile.

  ‘Herself shouldn’t be much longer,’ the woman announced. She went away, pulling the door shut, and Isabel, to her alarm, found herself alone with the stranger.

  ‘I’m afraid the coal is damp,’ the man explained in heavily accented English as he held the paper, waiting for the fire to draw. She nodded, wondering who he was, and, what piqued her curiosity more, why he was wearing a dinner suit at half past eleven in the morning. The suit needed pressing, and though his smooth dark hair with its threads of grey was combed back neatly, his skin was drained of colour, his jaw unshaven. It struck her that he couldn’t have changed since the night before, a thought she found shocking and thrilling at the same time. His undernourished appearance awoke her pity, though, and his expression was friendly.

  ‘It is very cold today, yes?’ he said, peering over the paper at the fire, which was beginning to roar.

  ‘Very,’ she agreed.

  She sat gingerly in one of the two armchairs, pulled off her gloves and rubbed her hands together as she looked about. The room was dark, even for a day without sun, owing to a great honeysuckle that grew across the window outside, its tangled tendrils knocking on the glass in the wind.

  Her aunt, she guessed, was fond of ornaments, and must be very sociable, for correspondence cards and invitations fought for space with china dogs and shepherdesses on the mantelpiece. There was a crowded bookcase against one wall. A slim book had been left open face down on a side table. She craned her head but couldn’t make out the title or author.