China Garden

by Liz Berry

  Clare gaped at her.“You mean all those flowers in the church are for a thanksgiving that my mother has come back?”

  “A thanksgiving for you, my dear. Now you’ve come, I’m sure everything will be all right.” She took in Clare’s astonishment, and her face fell.“Oh dear, you don’t know, do you? I’ve spoken too soon.”

  She looked genuinely distressed and Clare felt uncomfortable and alarmed. What on earth was going on? What didn’t she know? They were all trying to involve her in something she didn’t understand.

  “I’m only here temporarily,” she said, firmly.“I go to university in the autumn.”

  Mrs Potts-Dyrham’s face fell into even deeper folds.“Oh dear! We did so hope. And in three years’ time it will be too late. What are we going to do?” Her deep contralto rose almost to a wail.

  “I’m sorry you’re upset. I really don’t know what you want me to do.”

  “No, no, of course you don’t. Oh how disappointing. You have no idea how difficult everything has been. There’s so much to do here, with Mr Fletcher cutting down the staff all the time. And poor Mr Bristow so ill, that we hardly know how to go on.

  “That dreadful woman, making comments about the dusty curtains and tarnished silver ... Of course, she was quite right. It was only a matter of time before it was noticed. Mrs Anscomb will be so upset. We try so hard to keep this great place in the condition it should be in, but we can’t even keep the State Rooms clean now. I hardly dare wonder what the rest of the House is like. And there’s the garden centre and the refreshments in the Orangery on Open Days...”

  Clare said, doubtfully,“If you are short of staff I’ll be glad to help out while I’m here, but I think I ought to tell you that I shouldn’t really be in the House. I met Mr Fletcher yesterday and he told me to keep away. So perhaps I shouldn’t...”

  Mrs Potts-Dyrham went a dark, angry red.“It’s not up to Mr Fletcher to say who comes into this house. Not yet it isn’t. You must come and meet the staff, and have a cup of tea with us. Mrs Anscomb will be so pleased.”

  She swept Clare through an unobtrusive baize door to the left of the great staircase, and along narrow corridors with closed doors opening from them.

  “This is the Service Wing,” she said.“The Still Rooms, the Butler’s Room, the Servants’ Hall, all of them shut up now, of course. We only use the Great Kitchen. My great grandmother was Housekeeper here, and in those days there were thirty-five people employed in the house alone. Now there’s only Mr Bristow, Mr Aylward’s man, and Mrs Anscomb, the Cook-Housekeeper, and a few of us from the village who come in to help out or to clean. Mr Fletcher would get rid of both of them if he could, I’m sure, but they’ve been with Mr Aylward for years and he wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “There’s not enough money to run the place?” Clare said, sympathetically.

  “Money!” Mrs Potts-Dyrham snorted.“Why Mr Aylward is one of the richest men in the country. He’s made a fortune on the Stock Exchange. Not to mention the family money and the income from the estate. It’s Mr Fletcher, running everything down. Cuts. Cuts. As though there won’t be more than enough for him when Mr Aylward goes.”

  “Look,” said Clare, hurrying along behind her, and wondering where her mother was,“I really don’t think this is a good idea. I’m not supposed to be here.”

  But Mrs Potts-Dyrham had already pushed open a door. The kitchen was a huge room, lined with cupboards, drawers and open dressers laden with china, and two bulky kitchen ranges, straight out of the last century. The only evidence of the twentieth century was a large modern cooker and a walk-in freezer.

  The two people sitting at the big scrubbed table in the centre of the room drinking tea looked up startled. One was Mr Bristow, the other was a pretty, elderly woman with bobbing curls. Clare recognized her at once. She was the crazy lady who had been dancing triumphantly in the drive yesterday—Mrs Anscomb, Mr Aylward’s Housekeeper.

  “I have brought Clare to meet you,” said Mrs Potts-Dyrham, complacently, a conjuror who had produced a particularly fine rabbit.

  Mr Bristow, beaming, struggled to his feet to clasp her hand tightly. Mrs Anscomb, exclaiming joyfully, was hugging and kissing her with tears in her eyes, as though she was a prodigal daughter of the House, just come home, when the door opened again and her mother came through, carrying a tray.

  Chapter 8

  Bad timing, Clare admitted to herself, stretching out on the grass and watching a large bird hovering way up in the golden heat haze of the afternoon sky. A kestrel? A hawk of some kind. She knew next to nothing about birds, but there was something predatory and worrying about that dark shadow.

  She might have known that her mother would appear at the crucial moment. Hadn’t she always done so?

  Clare had got out of the kitchen as soon as she could, promising to come back next day and help with the chores. Of course, her mother hadn’t said anything in front of the others, but her tight lips and cold eyes had promised a reckoning this evening. Another row. Clare sighed. Why couldn’t they get on together now?

  Generally her mother appeared calm and even-tempered. But Clare was aware of strong feelings buried deep, and seldom expressed. Frances could be inflexible and unforgiving when something mattered deeply to her. And there was something here that kept welling up, breaking through the wall of her control, like water through a sea wall, no matter how much she scurried round blocking the holes.

  Clare turned over and propped her head on her hands, chewing a stem of grass. She had climbed the steep rise to the east of the House, Raven Hill, with its crown of trees, and was looking down on Ravensmere.

  It lay on a terrace of level ground against the guardian bulk of Barrow Beacon Hill, cupped in a ring of lesser hills and hanging woods. Its lawns sloped down to the River Raven winding through the centre of the bowl. The river had been dammed to create a great irregular lake, like a glimmering mirror several miles around, before curving away below her along the base of a wooded, secret valley.

  At the other end of the lake she could see an elegant bridge and a Cascade, and a series of smaller pools. Each was lush with waterlilies and had a marble statue. There was a glimpse of the Upper Lake with its island, green and secret, hidden in the oak and beech woods which clustered closely here and covered the lower steep slopes of Barrow Beacon Hill. Above the trees rose the white dome of the Temple of Demeter, a romantic vision of another time, just like the painting in the House. Clare felt the same uncomfortable jolt of recognition and looked hastily away.

  From the hill it was easy to see the great age of the House. No ordered design on this side. It lay spread out like a tom cat basking in the sunlight, a jumbled collection of walls and towers. An E-shaped building with a long terrace and rows of big mullioned windows faced the lake, next to an even older wing, with pointed windows and narrow doors, which must be the remains of the original Abbey. And there was Rosamond’s Tower, comically tacked on to the corner like an afterthought. Everything was built of weathered stone, just as she had imagined.

  The sides of the House were flanked by gardens. On the east side, below her, were the vegetable and herb gardens, divided into walled squares like a chessboard. The light was so clear and sharp she could even see Mai and a youth walking towards the greenhouses of the garden centre.

  On the west side there were formal gardens, flower-beds and rose gardens and, surely somewhere beyond, there would be the China Garden. Suddenly, for no reason, her heart was beating heavily against the walls of her chest. Even the name made her feel frightened and excited at the same time.

  Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow I’ll go and look for it.

  The lambent sunlight of the afternoon seemed to deepen and expand, washing over the golden stone, illuminating every detail like the pictures in old painted manuscripts. She could see the mossy cobbles of the courtyard, the lichened-covered walls of the dovecote, the carved stone of the windows and lintels. A prancing dragon looked down from a corner of Rosamond’s T
ower.

  It was a house built over the centuries by craftsmen with loving care, paying attention to the exact and proper detail, Clare thought. No shoddy materials. Nothing make do, or bodged-up like today. Nothing tricky or done to show off. Just care and love and the best they could do.

  Generations of people had worked here and loved this place. They had worshipped here. There was an almost tangible atmosphere of peace. A sacred place, Mrs Potts-Dyrham had said.

  There was energy too—a tingling sense of aliveness... something else. She had felt that from the first, as they drove through the gates. She wasn’t imagining that. There was something immensely important here for everyone. Peace? Healing? Something.

  But it was all to be destroyed. Turned into a nuclear dumping ground.

  Pain moved inside her chest and diaphragm, clenching her stomach until she thought she was going to be sick. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t bear it to happen. The very idea had become agonizing. Ravensmere had reached out somehow and claimed her for its own.

  When she opened her eyes again there was a change. The air wavered. The edges of the building seemed to be softening and blurring. The House looked smaller, older, different somehow. Rosamond’s Tower had gone, and then all the stone buildings faded. There was a sturdy church made of wood, and huts surrounded by a high fence, then they too were gone, and there was a spacious single-storey white building with a courtyard and a fountain. The water in the fountain flashed in the sunlight, and then there were no buildings at all in the secret green bowl in the hills, just women dancing, a snaking line of nine dancers weaving a spiral knot with their bodies.

  Despite the warm sun on her shoulders, a slow shiver ran the length of Clare’s spine. There was no church, no white temple, no women.

  She rolled over on to her back and pressed the back of her arm against her eyes. The sun sent golden sequins spinning behind her eyelids.

  Of course, it could just have been the heat bouncing off the stone, or maybe it was the way she was staring. If you looked at things hard enough...

  No good inventing excuses. Her stomach bunched up again. She was hallucinating. There were the children in the field this morning, and the picture, and the stable yard yesterday. That was when it had started. And all the time it was getting clearer, more intense.

  She would have to see a doctor. I’m absolutely spooked, she thought. There were goosebumps on her skin and her hair, prickled with electricity. The sun had gone behind a cloud and the shadow spread a chill all over her.

  Time to go. She moved her arm, curiously reluctant, and opened her eyes.

  No cloud. He was standing over her, blotting out the sun. A tall bulky figure in black leathers, staring down at her. She looked into the darkest coldest eyes she had ever seen. The kind of cold that burned. She stared back hypnotized, and for a moment the bird sounds faded and there was only the sound of the breeze in the tall grass.

  How had he got there, Clare wondered, dazed? She hadn’t heard a sound. He was just there, like a wizard. Conjured up. Another hallucination. Or a ghost?

  On that thought, in one fluid movement, she was on her feet and running, leaping down the hill, her legs aching, her lungs bursting. She swung over the low stone wall of the outer field and glanced back briefly. He wasn’t following. But she could hear his wild laughter.

  She made for the House, forcing herself to drop into a walk, and turned quickly into the Orangery. All the visitors were gone, and it was empty now except for Mrs Anscomb counting the takings.

  “What’s up, m’dear?” she said, alarmed, staring at Glare.“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Clare pulled in a few deep breaths and propped herself against the counter. She felt ashamed of her wild flight. She hadn’t run away like that since her junior school days.

  “There’s a man up there. A young man. He startled me. I don’t know how he got into the park. I don’t think he’s a visitor.”

  Mrs Anscomb looked at her narrowly.“Where did you say he was?”

  “Up on the hill. Raven Hill. I didn’t hear a thing. He just sort of appeared like a ghost. Very tall. All in black leathers, on a day like this. He was kind of shadowy ...”

  Mrs Anscomb dropped the pile of coins. They ran around bumping over the old uneven tiles. Clare chased them and piled them back on the counter, but Mrs Anscomb wasn’t looking at them. She was staring at Clare, her cheeks mottled an unhealthy red.

  “Joseph Barton swore he’d seen him up there. Disappeared, he said, just disappeared.”

  Clare gaped at her.“You don’t mean it really was a ghost?”

  Mrs Anscomb looked away uncomfortably.“Could be,” she muttered.

  “But he was wearing motor-cycle gear! You know, leathers and stuff. He didn’t seem like a ghost to me, he blotted out the sun. I thought you could see through ghosts. I thought they had armour and clanking chains.”

  She tried to laugh, but Mrs Anscomb picked up the coins and fingered them uneasily.“Not that one. It’s not an old ghost.”

  “But who is it supposed to be?”

  “Likely Brandon Aylward, Mr Aylward’s son.”

  “Mr Aylward’s son? But why...”

  “Better not to talk about him.”

  “But...”

  “Look, m’dear, we none of us talk about Brandon. Mr Aylward don’t like it. He had an accident and died sudden like, and Mr Aylward never got over it.” She smiled comfortingly.“Don’t worry, Clare m’dear, you’ll probably never see him again. Nobody ever seen him twice.”

  Clare devoutly hoped not. It was not that she actually believed Mrs Anscomb. The figure had been too solid, too alive, somehow, to be a ghost. It was the memory of those ice-dark eyes which gave her the shivers, that and the feeling of danger and the wild laughter.

  Chapter 9

  “Clare, you promised!” Frances closed the front door with a snap, and walked angrily into the kitchen where Clare had started to prepare a salad for their evening meal.

  “No I didn’t.” Clare turned. She was in no mood to be conciliatory; she had several bones to pick with her mother.“I said I would go to the village, and I did. There’s no sensible reason why I shouldn’t take the tour of the House. It’s open to the public, isn’t it? And if you’re worried about your precious job—Roger Fletcher has gone to London for a few days, James Kenward said so. Nobody in the House will tell him. They don’t like him.”

  “You’ve met James?” Her mother dropped into a chair drawn up at the kitchen table.

  “And Mai Lee, and Dr McKinnon, and a whole lot of other people. Oh, and I’ve got a message for you from the vicar. He said to tell you that he’s there if you need to talk to him.”

  Frances said warily.“Trevor Holmes. What else did he say?”

  “Did you know they’ve filled the church with flowers because we’ve come here? Flowers everywhere. Now isn’t that weird?”

  The colour crept up Frances’ cheeks, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes. She got up, took eggs from the fridge and set them to boil on the cooker, keeping her back turned to Clare.

  Clare said grimly,“What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Oh no, you’re not getting away with that. I want some answers. Everybody here knows something that I don’t know, and they expect me to know it too. I feel a complete idiot. This place, the village, is… strange. You know, don’t you? You know all about it.”

  “Don’t push things, Clare. You’ll understand everything—at the right time.”

  “That’s not good enough. You could have warned me. You could have told me that everybody knows you. Mrs Gregg at the shop, Mrs Potts-Dyrham—they’ve all been waiting for you to come back. Why? And how come they knew my name, and who I was—before I told them?”

  “I... well, it’s a small village. Gossip gets around. Your grandfather... our family is… was respected.”

  “And you were born at Kenward Farm,” said Clare slowly. She leaned o
n the kitchen units and watched her mother’s back, and part of the puzzle slotted into place.

  “You’re a Kenward, aren’t you? One of the old families here. Of course they would know you. No wonder the vicar was telling me about the Kenwards in the churchyard. He must have thought I was half-witted.”

  Frances ran the eggs under the cold tap, and began to peel them. At last she said reluctantly,“Kenward was my maiden name.”

  “Weston. That’s what you always said.”

  The icy accusation in Clare’s voice brought her mother to the table.“Please, Clare, you’ve got to understand. This is very difficult for me.”

  “So tell me. Explain. How can I understand if you don’t clear up all this stupid mystery?”

  “There’s no mystery. When I went to London I changed my name. There’s nothing wrong with that. Lots of people do. I’d... well, I’d run away from home and I didn’t want to be found.” She took a deep breath.“There was a terrible quarrel here and I—left. My father told me he wanted nothing more to do with me and I swore I’d never come back.”

  “But you came back for his funeral. You must have kept in touch with someone here.”

  “Sarah McKinnon. She’s my mother’s cousin. I needed a reference for the hospital. And she wrote me from time to time, telling me how Father was. I knew she could be trusted. I loved him very much, Clare.” Her voice broke and she hastily turned back to the chopping board.

  “Did my dad know your real name?”

  “Of course he did. He knew all about it. I met him at the hospital. He supported me through it all and then I married him.”

  “Supported you through what?”

  “Bad times. And I had a nervous breakdown.”

  She put the knife down, and rinsed her hands under the tap. They were shaking.“Clare, I really can’t face any food just now. You go ahead and eat. I want to go back to the House. I’m worried about Mr Aylward. I need to check on him.”

  Clare watched her.“You’re just putting it off. There’s a lot you’re not telling me.”