The Memory Garden Read online

  There were other occasions, Mel thought, as she washed up the breakfast bowls, when Patrick seemed to her unfathomable, when he would retreat deep inside himself, turning distant unhappy eyes upon her when she begged to know what was the matter.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ he would mutter. ‘Don’t nag at me.’

  And she would turn away quickly to hide the tide of panic rising in her chest, until he would see that he had hurt her and would wrap his arms around her in that frighteningly desperate way, murmuring, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s not you, it’s never anything to do with you. I’m sorry.’

  It might be just his nature, these periods of loss of energy, of introspection. She had met his parents and his brother Joe and had been struck by the strange kinks of inheritance.

  Frank Winterton, Patrick’s father, was a straightforward man in his seventies with a light manner and a firm handshake. His hair grew in a tuft in front like both his sons’ did, but was a shock of silvery-white now. Mrs Winterton, Gaynor, was more intense. Not a happy person, Mel thought, with pity, noticing the stiffness of her arthritic limbs.

  ‘I suppose you’re vegetarian or something,’ was her first comment to Mel, when she and Patrick arrived at their converted farmhouse for lunch two Sundays ago. ‘You all seem to be faddy these days, your generation.’

  ‘No, I’ll eat anything,’ was Mel’s mollifying reply but she could sense that Gaynor felt she was being tested.

  When Mel praised the pretty farmhouse-style kitchen, Gaynor looked pleased but said, ‘I don’t suppose it’s as sophisticated as you’re used to.’

  ‘It’s beautiful, I love it,’ reassured Mel, and Gaynor seemed to relax a bit, but was still anxious serving up the food and took no compliment at face value. Perhaps she had passed some dark streak of unhappiness on to Patrick, her elder son.

  Joe, on the other hand, had clearly taken after his father, happy to be living where he had grown up, a teacher married to another teacher, completely at ease tending to the demands of their eight-month-old son Thomas who, as the first grandchild, was the centre of attention.

  It was so illuminating meeting people’s parents, Mel mused, as she sat down at the kitchen table again, staring at her laptop where the white doves of her screensaver now soared across the screen in never-ending flight. Now she knew where that funny gesture came from, that Patrick had sometimes of stroking the back of his neck. His father did exactly the same thing. Or the way he would stand hands in pockets – that was like Joe. Those were just superficial things, she knew, but there was something about the way he and his brother vied for their mother’s attention. What did that presage for his relationship with women in general, with Mel? She shrugged, pressing the touchpad on her laptop and causing the doves to freeze before they dissolved into some secret limbo inside her computer and her document appeared.

  White birds. From time to time she and Patrick had glimpsed the albino blackbird in the garden, but never as closely as they had that day six weeks ago in the Flower Garden. It was so distinctive she was surprised it hadn’t succumbed to some predator, even in this garden haven. Every time she saw it she sent up a silent prayer for its survival.

  As she moved to close her document, warning of an email pinged onto the screen. Chrissie was asking what she wanted for her birthday in four weeks’ time.

  Mel smiled. Typical of her sister. It had never occurred to her to surprise"; font-weight: bold; awis ces Mel with a choice of present in her life. She pressed Reply and tapped out her answer: No Marks & Spencer for miles here, so tokens no good. How about some earrings, say silver studs, if that’s OK. She thought for a moment then typed, Hope to see you soon.

  She had last seen Chrissie and her family nearly six weeks ago when she had journeyed up to London on the train just before the anniversary of their mother’s death. They had spent the heavy day together, the two of them, visiting the graveyard where Maureen’s ashes were buried, threading her favourite white lilies into the vase holes on the small gravestone. Later, she had stayed for supper with the family and they had spoken to William on the phone. She had felt too worn out with emotion to go on to her flat that night, so had slept in the spare bedroom with Rory’s fluffy polar bear for company.

  It was strange returning home to Clapham the following day. When she unlocked the door, the flat smelled musty, and black dust from the street had settled in a fine layer on everything, separating her like a symbolic veil from her own past. The garden, too, looked abandoned, the grass a meadow, the beds a riot of nettles. Her neighbour, Cara, had gone back to visit her parents in Spain, so there wasn’t even the comfort of footsteps and opera music overhead.

  She had only been in Cornwall for a month or so, but now, her mind full of Merryn and Patrick, she felt like a visitor in London. In those few weeks, she had bedded down in another world, put down thirsty roots, found underground water that slaked her sadness. On the phone to Patrick that night from Clapham she became overwhelmed by a longing to be back in the cold moonlit garden with the sound of running water, the great silent stars looking down overhead, the past whispering its secrets and the wilderness creeping its way to the door.

  The following couple of days, Mel visited the city’s libraries to check a whole sheaf of queries she had compiled so far during the writing of her book. She also met up with Aimee and a number of other friends. Aimee had met a man she really liked.

  ‘Do you remember Callum, the boy I told you about, who came on my Paris trip? Well, it’s his father. He’s called Stuart.’

  ‘Are you allowed to go out with your kids’ parents, Aimee?’ asked Mel.

  ‘Mmm, not sure of the etiquette on that one. But I’m only teaching Callum this term, so I think it’s all right. I told you I had to speak to Stuart after the incident with the wine in Paris? Well, he came in to see me after school one day for a longer chat. It turns out he split up from his wife last year and Callum’s found it difficult to deal with. Then I bumped into him at a neighbour’s party. It went on from there, really.’

  So Stuart was on the rebound, too. Like Mel and Patrick. ‘I’m really pleased for you, Aimee,’ Mel said, hugging her friend, ‘but don’t get hurt again.’

  ‘I could say the same to you,’ answered Aimee, who had heard all about Patrick, but she looked so happy that Mel knew at this point Aimee didn’t care.

  She called into college where people greeted her with warmth, yes, but also with surprise. She was supposed to be having a term off, so what on earth was she doing back?

  Once, an office door opened and Jake came

  Chapter 20

  ‘Just opposite the church, it is,’ said Carrie, as the car swung round another bend in the lane, the trees overhead dripping with the recent rain. A granite tower came into view on the right. ‘There.’

  Mel felt the wheels plough into the muddy verge. ‘Oh yeuch,’ she said as she climbed out into the sludge. She tiptoed round and opened the door for Carrie to ease her bulk out, then lifted the seat to rescue the pot plant Mel had brought as a present for Aunty Norah.

  ‘We must take Norah as we find her,’ Carrie had explained. ‘She’ll be eighty-six now and I couldn’t get much sense out of her on the phone, she’s so deaf.’

  ‘She is expecting us, though?’ Mel asked.

  ‘Oh yes, I had a word with Cyril, her husband. Dear Cyril. Doesn’t say much, though.’

  Unlike Carrie, who had talked non-stop the whole of the hour’s drive from Lamorna to this little hamlet outside Truro where Jenna’s daughter lived. Carrie had described Norah’s three, now middle-aged children, and recounted the names and exploits of their own grown-up sons and daughters until Mel’s head spun. She then told Mel about her upbringing in Penzance, where her father had worked as a railway guard, and about her dead husband Neil, over whose memory death had cast a golden glow. Mel thought he sounded a quiet and malleable foil to Carrie’s considerable energetic presence, the backroom boy in the hotel where Carrie played front-of-house. But like
the leitmotif in a piece of music, her attention periodically returned to her son Matt.

  ‘I worry so much about him,’ sighed Carrie. ‘He lets life drift by. He’s a good boy, coming home the way he does, but he has no sense of purpose. Doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. I suppose it’s partly my fault. I always organised everything for him, you see. He was my only one. And so when Neil died he was all I had left. Oh, you need the middle lane here, sorry, my love.’

  Mel swerved right on the main road, cutting up a shiny navy saloon car which hooted urgently. She was feeling vaguely guilty about Matt, whom she had hardly seen in the last few weeks. Carrie chattered on.

  ‘He misses his father, of course, though he doesn’t say so. Neil was a good man, but he wasn’t firm enough with Matt. Never made him take responsibility for anything. They used to potter about together. Neil did all the hotel cooking, you see, and Matt would help him. And they’d go fishing together when Neil had a couple of hours off.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll find something to interest him,’ Mel said, feeling compelled to comment when Carrie drew breath. ‘What about his photography? I thought his pictures were very good.’

  ‘Oh, that’s just another hobby,’ moaned Carrie. ‘He’s never wanted to make a career out of it. It’s just something else he fits around all the other things he does, the diving, the water-skiing. What happens when he gets married and has children, I ask you? How’s he going to pay for everything?’

  Mel laughed. Was Carrie, like Irina, another over-ambitious mother? Or was it mere concern to see one’s child settled and secure. Maybe she wouldn’t understand the Carries and Irinas until she had a child of her own. If she ever did . . . She slowed behind a trundling farm vehicle and even Carrie fell silent as they watched fruitlessly for the chance to overtake. But Mel’s mind was ticking over.

  She was half-glad she had never had this parental pressure. extraordinary coincidence,is cesHer mother was a strong example to her daughters without trying too hard, unlike Carrie; a strong, positive person who knew what she was good at and what she needed to do. Mel remembered some words of a conversation she had had with her mother when Maureen lay in hospital after an early bout of exploratory surgery.

  ‘I was never concerned over Chrissie and William,’ Maureen had told her. ‘William was like his father – knew what he wanted to do and got on with it. And Chrissie – she sails through life. It was you, Mel, wanting so much to try things but anxious about them, lacking in confidence. I’m so glad you found something that suits you, dear.’

  What is it that makes us so different, one from another, even within the same family, Mel wondered. And how much can we really blame our parents, as Carrie was now blaming herself.

  Again, she was surprised by that image of her father lifting her up as a toddler, high in the air. Then he had gone.

  They had visited their father regularly in his new life. A weekend once a month, a two-week holiday with him and his new wife Stella every summer until they were teenagers and could refuse to go. When had she last seen him, come to think about it? Christmas. And before that, at her mother’s funeral. He had come without Stella and stood alone, away from the large family party in the church as though afraid someone might hiss at him to go away, say that he was unwelcome. Though they would never have done that. Mel knew that his guilt at leaving them all still weighed him down. Because of this guilt he had never reforged his relationship with his children – it had never been natural again.

  Yet there was William, turning into a carbon copy of their father, without any seeming awareness about it. Strange really, since William’s relationship with his father was formal at best. Did William still see the man as a role model, or was this singleminded determination to become a surgeon, his brilliance at chess, his tendency to live on his nerves, merely to do with DNA? Let’s hope that the likenesses didn’t apply to William’s attitude to marriage, thought Mel, picturing his sweet caring wife, who had given up her own medical career to bring up their children.

  Carrie was quiet still and Mel wondered whether she hadn’t responded enthusiastically enough to what she had been saying.

  ‘I’m sure it will work out for Matt. He seems such a nice, talented person,’ she said. She pictured his neat tanned features, the quirky mouth, twisted in a perpetual smile, the short sleek hair and his lean, graceful body, and remembered the way he had looked at her that day she had got together with Patrick. Matt would be all right.

  She glanced at Carrie. Why was the woman looking weirdly at her?

  ‘I’m sure that is what he thinks about you, my dear,’ said Carrie gently.

  Mel gripped the wheel tighter. ‘Really?’ she said faintly.

  ‘He’s become very fond of you.’

  ‘I’m sure not. I’ve hardly seen him recently.’

  Carrie must have absorbed her meaning because she said, ‘There’s no hope there, then?’

  ‘No,’ said Mel.

  ‘Oh. Well, don’t tell him I talked to you about it.’

  He’d be absolutely mortified, thought Mel, herself red with embarrassment. Just at that moment the farm vehicle pulled into a layby and she relieved her feelings by slamming her foot down on the accelerator and roaring past.

  ‘Watch out, you’ve missed the turning,’ cried Carrie, then as Mel slowed"; font-weight: bold; inu of down to turn round, ‘oh no, you’re all right. It’s coming up.’

  The subject of Matt’s lovelife, it seemed, was closed.

  As they drove into deep country they passed a sign to a National Trust garden.

  ‘Matt was telling me about all your work on the Merryn garden. Norah would be interested to hear about that. Will he open the place up, do you think?’

  ‘Open it? You mean to the public?’

  ‘There’s several that do in Lamorna. There’d be a lot of interest. Brings visitors to the area, that sort of thing – with the right advertising, of course. I’d support it – keep leaflets in the hotel. And he’d need permission for the developments, of course.’

  ‘What developments?’ Mel was lost.

  ‘You know, a tea room and a car park. Lavatories.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s anywhere near that stage yet,’ said Mel, bewildered.

  ‘That was the road to Norah’s,’ said Carrie suddenly, as they shot past a narrow turning.

  ‘Don’t know that I’m going to be much use to you, dear,’ said Norah, looking Mel up and down in an admiring fashion as they sat drinking coffee in the front room. She had a high-pitched voice cracking with age. ‘My mother’s been dead these twenty years now.’

  Mel put down her cup and leaned forward. ‘I’m trying to find out anything I can about an artist I’ve come across,’ she said, speaking clearly for Norah. ‘At Merryn Hall, where I’m staying, there are some paintings signed with the initials P.T. I’m sure the artist was in some way connected to the house and that they were made shortly before the First War. That’s when your mother was in service there, wasn’t it?’

  Norah frowned. ‘One of the family was a painter, my mother used to say. Master Charles, she called him.’

  ‘I’ve learned a little bit about Charles Carey,’ said Mel, nodding, and told her about what she had found in the archives. ‘But the only person I’ve discovered with those initials, P.T., was another of the maids. It seems a bit unlikely, but I thought I’d ask if your mother ever talked about her. The name was Pearl Treglown.’

  Norah thought for a moment then muttered, ‘Pearl. That might be right. Was it Pearl or something else?’ She made to get up, but her dog, an elderly Jack Russell called Sinbad, was sitting on her feet and she said, ‘If you wouldn’t mind, dear. A thin white book. It’s on the top shelf over there.’ She waved her hand towards a tall bookcase with glass doors. ‘Next to the big red dictionary.’

  Mel opened one of the doors and read along the spines. ‘Do you mean this one?’ She held up a large white-covered paperback with a linocut print of a fishing boat on th
e front. It was called Voices of West Cornwall and bore the logo of some small local publisher. Though tempted to open it, Mel dutifully passed it into Norah’s outstretched fingers, closed the bookcase and sat down again.

  Norah seemed to take for ever, fumbling in her cardigan pocket for her glasses case, having difficulty finding the page she wanted. Finally she got there and frowned as she drew a finger down the text.

  ‘Ah yes, here it is. Pearl. You look, dear. The print is stupidly small. They came to see Mother, ooh, when was it?’ Her hand wobbled as she passed the book to Mel.

  Mel kept her finger in the page Norah had of Newlyn and Lamorna,is ces found while she checked the book’s date of publication. ‘1972,’ she said.

  It was a collection of oral history and the blurb on the back explained that the purpose of the publication was to record the experiences of those who could remember the First World War and before. She turned to the page Norah had found and started to read.

  Jenna Cooper, née Penhale

  I went to be kitchenmaid at Merryn Hall in 1907 when I left school. I was only fourteen but back then that’s what you did and my mam couldn’t afford to keep me home seeing my pa was ill with his heart and she had my brothers and sisters to feed. I missed home at first but I saw them all every Sundayll on it, the

  Chapter 21

  March 1913

  Pearl looked around swiftly to check no one had seen her, then rapped on the stable door and called, ‘Sir, it’s me,’ in a low, urgent voice. Hearing a muffled response, she gripped her sketchbook under one arm, hauled the double-door ajar and slipped inside, pulling it shut behind her.

  She stood in the coolness of the stable, her eyes adjusting to the patterns of light and shadow.

  It always surprised her every time she saw it, Charles’s studio. From the outside it was just another ordinary stable in the block, with the doors of a small hayloft visible above. Inside, it still smelled like a stable, of earth and leather, hay and the sweet, not unpleasant, hint of manure. But this was now overlaid with a strong odour of linseed oil. Against the wall rested several canvases wrapped in brown paper – finished paintings, Pearl knew, destined for an exhibition in Truro that she would never see. And at a workbench at the back of the room Charles stood measuring canvas from a roll across a wooden frame the size of Aunt Dolly’s favourite tea tray.