But then, there were the small changes generations of Graces had made to the design, the years of neglect and then Ned’s more recent innovations.
I wandered around for a bit, finding that some of the smaller paths in the mid-level beds led to gravel circles with stone seats that would be hidden when the plants grew taller.
Down in the sunken garden, Gertie had kept the thyme, chives, mint, marjoram and other lower-growing herbs neat in their brick-edged beds, radiating out from the old sundial – and it did look very old indeed.
The galleon pointer was in full sail and round the edge of the dial words had been engraved, though the archaic script was hard to make out. But it was quite poetical really, when I’d grasped that they’d written ‘f’ where they’d meant ‘s’.
‘The sun is my treasure, it measures the hours in bars of gold.’
I wondered if it had been put there by the buccaneering Grace, Nathaniel? I thought it might, though then it would pre-date the apothecary garden and I wasn’t sure what was here before.
I took another path out, past beds planted with the sturdy stems of lovage and fennel … and the rhubarb Ned had mentioned, heading for his mud hollow in the bottom right-hand corner.
Last time I’d seen it, it had looked a bit like a muddy building site, but he’d certainly put in a lot of work since then and most of the hard landscaping was finished.
The spring by the back wall was now channelled down a small waterfall of old, lichen-spotted boulders, to the new small pool, now lined and the edges landscaped to look natural. It just wanted planting up – and then water creatures of all kinds would discover it and even, perhaps, dragonflies.
I remembered there was to be a small wooden bridge across the stream, just above the pool, which would lead to a gazebo, but only the foundations were there, waiting for the structures. I could imagine it, though …
By the back wall were barberry bushes around the marshy area, where flags marked the path of the wooden walkway, still to be laid.
I thought Ned had done very well to get it to this stage so soon, especially now I knew that he’d spent last year re-gravelling the paths, reinstating the lawn borders in the side beds, replanting most of the segments of the mid-level beds and, of course, creating the entire Poison Garden.
I walked past that on my way back to the courtyard, but didn’t turn off for a better look: I could wait for my guided tour, when Ned felt the need to enthuse about his collection to someone who knew what he was talking about.
But I still wasn’t going anywhere near that rosary pea vine.
18
Slightly Gnawed
Ned was in the courtyard, sitting on the steps up to the office and feeding the peacocks handfuls of something from a small blue bucket. The gate to the house had been left ajar, giving a tantalizing glimpse of a small stretch of lawn and a terrace, then the house with its gleaming mullioned windows, intricately patterned black and white walls and, to the right, the side of a newer wing in white stucco, somewhat in need of a new coat of paint.
He looked up. ‘I spotted you making down the garden when I went to feed the fish, but I thought you’d like to explore it on your own this time.’
‘Yes, it was nice to just wander and take it all in,’ I agreed. ‘The Victorians seemed to have had a mania for marking everything in the garden with those metal tags, didn’t they? They must come in handy: you can see what goes where, even when the beds are currently empty.’
‘Yes, they’ve been useful, though when they dug up that large area during the war, the old tags that were there were just dumped in one of the outbuildings. Now I’m going to reinstate the vegetable-plot-style beds, with lawn pathways between, I’ll replant some of them.’
‘It was lucky you found them, and anything you can’t fit in the new beds will probably find a place somewhere else,’ I suggested. ‘Was it the late Victorians who put all those little paths into the mid-level beds, leading to the round seating areas?’
‘Yes. They’re also responsible for replacing some interesting old plants with newer, showier, but entirely useless things too,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind new varieties of plants, because gardens should evolve, but if they don’t have culinary or medicinal uses, they’ve had to come out.’
‘Or deadly ones,’ I pointed out.
‘I’ve got a few more things coming for the Poison Garden,’ he admitted. ‘But lots more for the wetland area.’
He went to put the plastic bucket back in the Potting Shed. When he returned, I said, ‘Gert’s right, you could fit a small greenhouse on this side of the wall to the garden. A tallish one, where you could overwinter those less hardy plants in terracotta pots you were telling me about.’
‘Maybe later. For now I can always wrap anything delicate in fleece over winter,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s look at that outbuilding and see just how feasible knocking through into the current shop would be.’
He unlocked the visitors’ gate and we went out onto the path that led up to the road. Over a low stone wall on the other side of it was the cluster of barns and outbuildings I’d seen on my walk around the Green, but there was a gate to them here, too.
The path at this end widened slightly into a small yard just in front of the old building that we’d come to see.
It was definitely a lot bigger than the shop. There were two windows, obscured by dirt, and a wooden door that looked as if something had been chewing the bottom.
‘When Nathaniel Grace bought the original house it wasn’t very grand, so there’s no big carriage house, just an old barn and a couple of stables,’ Ned said.
‘Good heavens – where am I to keep my barouche and four matched grey horses, then?’ I demanded, and he grinned.
‘No idea, but you can park your car in the yard over there, if you want to, like Elf. And Jacob keeps his old Land Rover in the barn in winter when the track to his house is too difficult.’
‘Jacob’s house is a converted barn, isn’t it? Why is there a barn up there, in the woods, where it’s so steep?’
‘It wasn’t always wooded. They used to run sheep on it, I think. Maybe it was something to do with that … I don’t know. The track does carry on past it, because there’s a farm just over the ridge. You can hike up to the top of the woods and then along until you come out above the Fairy Falls eventually. It’s quite a trek.’
‘I might try that one day off, when I’m feeling energetic,’ I said, then turned to look at the building we’d come to see, with its squat and slightly belligerent air.
‘I don’t know what its original purpose was. It might have started out as a feed store or tackroom or something,’ Ned suggested, pushing open the gnawed door with a creak onto a gloom only slightly alleviated by the brownish light coming through the century of cobwebs and encrusted filth on the windows.
‘That doorway is quite wide, so they might have kept animals in here,’ I said.
‘Maybe, but going by the workbenches and that rusty vice, it’s been used as a workshop fairly recently.’
‘Recently as in about seventy years ago?’
I’d followed him in and stood in the middle of what I was already thinking of as the Grace Garden Shop and Visitor Centre. ‘This has lots of possibilities,’ I told him encouragingly, even if most of them were currently large, black and had lots of legs.
Luckily, I’m not in the least afraid of spiders, or other creepy-crawlies, most of which are very helpful to gardeners, and even those that aren’t, like Cabbage White caterpillars, provide a tasty meal for the birds.
‘This is a good, big space,’ I said approvingly, then spotted something. ‘It looks as if there might originally have been a door through into the other side.’ I went over to examine the wall more closely.
‘Oh, yes, I’d forgotten. I spotted that from the other side when we were painting the shop walls. It looks like there was an opening through, then they filled it in when the lintel above it cracked.’
‘I don’t kno
w how you managed to forget that, because it will make it much easier for us! It’ll just need much more support,’ I told him. ‘Apart from that, it looks in better shape inside than you’d expect, from the state of that door.’
‘I have no idea what they might have kept in here that could chew through thick wood,’ he said, eyeing it.
‘Maybe one of your madder ancestors?’ I suggested, and he gave me a look.
‘I really don’t see why you shouldn’t knock through the wall to the shop, with suitable supports put in, and that would more than double the current space, Ned.’
‘I think it would be quite a big job,’ he said dubiously. ‘Expensive.’
‘I’m sure any builder worth his salt could do it in no time,’ I said. ‘Ideally, the visitors should exit through the shop, so they’d have to walk past loads of lovely shopping opportunities on the way …’
‘I’m still not sure it would make enough to justify all the outlay converting it.’
‘Trust me, it will,’ I said confidently. ‘You’ll need to make the door from the courtyard wheelchair accessible with a short ramp, and then you can solve the loo situation, by having an easy access one at the back of this new part.’
‘Which loo situation?’ he demanded.
‘You have one outside loo for visitors and one for staff – that’s not going to cut the mustard when you have loads of visitors, some of them disabled, or needing baby-changing facilities.’
‘Baby-changing facilities?’ He looked horrified.
‘Don’t worry, there can be a flap-down baby-changing table in the new toilet cubicle, so it’s multi-functional.’
‘Oh … great,’ he muttered, looking worried. ‘Planning permission … and plumbing …’ He ran his hands through his hair in a distracted way.
‘The current loos must be on the other side of the wall at the far end, so there shouldn’t be any difficulties with the plumbing. And you aren’t building a new shop, just extending into another area of it,’ I said reassuringly. ‘If the loo is at the end of this new part, perhaps divided by a stud wall, then the museum section can be in front of it … with more displays of things for sale nearer the exit door.’
‘We had to take the flags up in the shop and put a damp-proof membrane down before we re-layed them,’ Ned said. ‘We’d have to do the same in here.’
‘We might be able to save money by doing some of the decorating ourselves. I can do plastering, rough or otherwise, so you needn’t pay for that.’
‘Really?’ he asked sceptically.
‘I have all kinds of odd skills, from helping to renovate all those châteaux,’ I reminded him. ‘You can’t sit about in the evenings watching people working around you.’
‘I suppose not,’ he agreed.
‘I do think it will pay dividends in the long run, Ned, and sometimes you have to set a sprat to catch a mackerel.’
That was one of Aunt Em’s sayings.
‘You said you’d like to display the original garden plans and some of the old photos and documents here, for the visitors to see.’
‘True, and I do have several things we’ve found in the outhouses, like old gardening tools and blown-glass forcing jars, which would make a good display,’ he said, warming slightly to the idea. ‘I’ve still got more boxes of old papers and photos to sort through, if I ever have any time.’
‘Perfect: photos of the garden and house, past and present, a pamphlet about the history of the family and the garden … Elf could write that, and visitors will love to learn about the buccaneering Grace. I’m sure he had that sundial made now I’ve seen it closer. That’s a very Tudor galleon and the writing’s old and funny.’
‘You’re probably right. I think it was on the lawn behind the house originally, but was moved to its present spot later.’
‘So, are you going to add converting this building to your plans – maybe get someone to do an estimate?’ I demanded.
‘I’ll think about it,’ he said, and led the way back into the cobbled courtyard, locking the gate behind us.
‘Meanwhile, you need one of those big collecting boxes so people can donate towards the restoration of the garden.’
‘So you said … Seems a cheek when they’ve just paid four quid to look at it.’
‘There are a lot of garden lovers out there,’ I said, and then checked my watch and realized how long I must have spent pottering about with Ned.
‘Look at the time! I’ll have to go,’ I said. ‘Treena came over this morning with her friend Luke, the archaeologist in charge of that dig.’
‘You’d better get off, then,’ he said, and I thought he sounded slightly disappointed. Probably he’d hoped to rope me in for a bit of extra work, as Elf had warned me.
‘Treena’s meeting me at the bridge. She’s never been further into Jericho’s End than Risings, when she’s been called out to see the Pekingese, so it’s time she did. I thought we’d go up the River Walk and—’
My phone buzzed, cutting me off, and I fished it out of my pocket. ‘On my way, Treena!’ I said hastily. ‘Two minutes.’
I looked up. ‘Have to dash. Treena’s already waiting for me.’
Something about his expression – I don’t know, perhaps I imagined a faint wistfulness had replaced the disappointment – made me add, ‘Luke’s meeting us for lunch at the pub – join us if you’re free?’
I didn’t wait for an answer; I was already heading for the gate to the rose garden. I nearly dropped the phone again, trying to shove it in my pocket as I ran past the koi pond, another watery phone death narrowly averted, though maybe it would have lasted long enough for the fish to call their friends.
I wonder what fish would talk about to each other. Maybe the huge, orange, hairy creature that sat on the edge of the pool watching them, with a kind of detached, languid interest, and who barely glanced at me as I hurtled past.
Treena was standing in the embrasure on the upstream side of the bridge, leaning over the wide stone wall to watch the water slide deeply and quickly underneath.
‘You couldn’t play Pooh Sticks here,’ I said when I joined her. ‘They’d get smashed to bits in the Devil’s Cauldron on the other side.’
‘So would anyone who fell in,’ she said, with a shiver. ‘I wonder if anyone ever has?’
‘I expect people do fall in the river further upstream from time to time, but there are lots of big flat rocks sticking out into the water, so they probably get out again. Come on, let’s go and have a cup of coffee in my flat – unless you’d prefer the café?’
‘No, I want to see this flat of yours,’ she said. ‘I’m ready for a hot drink, too. Luke had me all over the site, holding the end of measuring tapes, or carrying things while he took pictures and dictated notes into his tablet. The wind really whips round you like liquid ice up there.’
‘Very poetic,’ I said. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting Luke later and hearing all about it … And I mentioned to Ned that Luke would be in the pub with us later and he’d be welcome to join us if he wanted to. He’s interested in the dig.’
‘Yes, of course – and I’d like to meet him, too!’
We went round to the back door and had barely got up to the flat when the cat flap gave a huge rattle.
‘That’s Caspar, the cat the Price-Joneses have just taken on from a rescue centre. He’s decided to spend most evenings with me, so they’ve put a cat flap in. I wonder how he knew we were here,’ I added as he appeared. ‘He was in the rose garden five minutes ago!’
Treena made much of him. ‘He’s a bit thin under all that fur, but seems in good condition.’
‘They’re trying to fatten him up a bit,’ I said. ‘He’s half Maine Coon, but they have no idea what the other half is.’
‘Whatever it was, the Maine Coon is winning out,’ she said.
She admired my little domain and said it already looked homely, what with mine and some of Mum’s bits and pieces spread about. Then she picked up Elf’s book and b
egan glancing through it, while I made the coffee. Caspar lay over her knees like a slightly knobbly rug.
‘This is quite interesting,’ she said when I put the mugs and a packet of chocolate digestives down on the chest that did duty as a coffee table.
‘It’s Elf Price-Jones’s book. I bought it in the village. Her style is a bit dull, but it’s full of fascinating information. I mean, I’ve already found out that a distant Vane ancestor of mine ran off with a son of the Lordly-Graces, which makes me very distantly related to Ned.’
‘Really? But everyone does seem to be distantly related to everyone else in these out-of-the-way villages,’ she said. ‘Though not usually, perhaps, the local bigwigs.’
‘I suppose I’m also distantly related to the current Lordly-Graces, too – or Cress, at any rate. But still, it all happened centuries ago, so it’s too remote a connection to count. Of course, no one, including Ned, has any idea I’m a Vane and I’m going to keep it that way. The Vanes are very disliked and sound unpleasant, even without the way they treated Mum. The only member of the family I’ve met is Wayne Vane and he was horrible – and possibly light-fingered.’
‘Well, Mum was adamant you shouldn’t approach the Vanes and make yourself known,’ Treena said. ‘And your mum didn’t want you to even come here, so I think you’re quite right to keep it quiet.’
Later, as we walked up to the Fairy Falls, I told her about the angels-versus-fairies arguments and how I felt sure, as Mum had done as a child, that there was something present up by the falls.
Treena is not at all imaginative and looked sceptical. This being a Sunday and so near Easter, there were quite a lot of visitors about and, although it was beautiful up by the falls, it had none of the magic it so often held.
We went out of the top turnstile and down the village street, pausing for Treena to buy her own copy of Elf’s book. The proprietor of the gift shop, who had been one of the quiz night regulars, greeted me in a friendly way and seemed to know all about me – or everything that was public knowledge, anyway. The whole village presumably does, by now.
The Garden of Forgotten Wishes: The heartwarming and uplifting new rom-com from the Sunday Times bestseller Page 19