China Garden

by Liz Berry

“Chris Stevens wanted to.”

  Clare said carefully,“That sounds like a good idea.” And saw that her mother was fighting back tears.“I’m sorry I’ve been such a pain this year. I was manic about the exams and trying to make up my mind about the courses. And Adrian didn’t help. You were right about Adrian. I can’t think what I saw in him. Since I came here things seem clearer somehow.”

  She took a deep breath, a faint flush of colour in her cheeks.“I’ve been thinking lately that I was wrong about my university course too. Like you said. I don’t want to do a business degree, and I don’t want to go away to Sussex.”

  The expression of relief and delight on her mother’s face made Clare realize just how worried she had been.“Oh Clare, I’m so glad. I knew that degree wasn’t right for you. What are you going to do?”

  Clare said hesitantly,“I thought perhaps I’d ask Dr McKinnon about Medicine.”

  “But won’t the courses be filled for this year?”

  “I’ll have to wait until next year. I don’t mind. I can work and save up. The thing is, it would mean I’d be studying for years longer. I don’t know if we can afford it.”

  Frances kissed her.“You’ve got to have a good career. Something you really want to do. We’ll manage somehow, Clare.”

  She opened the front door.“We’ll talk about it this evening. I’ll probably be late back.”

  “Mum? Write to Chris?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Clare went on staring blindly out of the window, thinking about her mother’s story. She felt cold, angry and depressed. She should telephone Mark, tell him what Mr Aylward had said. Tell him she had decided not to take up the place at Sussex. The coil of anger in her wound tighter. Why did it always have to be her who gave way? He hadn’t even apologized for his trickery on Barrow Beacon Hill.

  Tomorrow would be soon enough. She would tell him tomorrow when he came up to the House. She turned on the television.

  In the morning she bumped into James Kenward coming out of the garden centre. He was grinning from ear to ear, his red hair curling wildly over his forehead.

  “You look cheerful.”

  “Top of the world.”

  “Wait till Roger Fletcher gets at you.”

  He stared.“You mean you haven’t heard? He’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Sent off yesterday with a flea in his ear and six months’ salary in lieu of notice.”

  “You mean Mr Aylward has sacked him?” Clare could not believe it.

  “Sent for us both yesterday. Said that it had come to his notice that Fletcher had been attempting to dispose illegally of valuable parts of the estate like the Liber Somnium Sanctus for his own profit.

  “Fletcher was livid. He said that Mr Aylward was senile and he’d have him certified and thrown into a private clinic.”

  “He can’t do that, can he?” Clare was horrified.

  James grinned.“Not after Mr Aylward produced his solicitor, sitting in the next room with the door open listening, and a list as long as your arm of all Fletcher’s nasty little activities over the last five years, with dates, times, corroborative evidence—most of which he could go to prison for.

  “By the time he’d finished Roger Fletcher was as white as a sheet and couldn’t get out of the room quick enough. My guess is he’s on his way out of the country in case Mr Aylward changes his mind and calls in the Fraud Squad.”

  “But how did Mr Aylward find out? And why didn’t he do anything before?” But she knew that. She could hear his voice: I thought to use him as a weapon of destruction.

  James shrugged.“He finds out everything. Just gives people enough rope to hang themselves. Fletcher was a fool to try it. When the old man moves he moves fast.”

  “But who’s going to manage the estate now?”

  He flung his arms apart dramatically,“C’est moi!”

  “James!” Clare beamed with delight.“Oh congratulations. How absolutely fantastic! Promise you won’t sell Ravensmere to Nuclear Energy.”

  He grinned.“Not a chance. I can’t wait to stop his dubious farming practices too. By the way, we’re bringing the wedding forward now. I’ve been offered Kenward Farm when the lease expires at the end of the month. Mai wants to know if you’ll be her bridesmaid?”

  Clare frowned.“But what about Mark’s mother? Mark wanted Kenwards.”

  “Mr Aylward owns a racing stable and house over at Win-canton. I think he’s going to offer her a partnership She’s a brilliant horsewoman, but the stables aren’t paying here. Not in the right place.”

  “And Mark, what about him?”

  James looked surprised.“He gets Ravensmere, of course, the estate, the farms, the whole caboodle.”

  Chapter 23

  Mark had gone.

  Clare could not believe it. All day she had expected to see him come riding into the stable yard, when he heard the good news that his old enemy was out on his ear, but he did not come. She telephoned Kenward Farm, but there was no reply. Late in the evening there was still no reply. Clare began to realize, with a cold misery, that he had meant exactly what he had said.

  In her mind Clare went over and over her visit to Kenwards obsessively, trying to re-write the script. What she could have said. What she could have done. If only she hadn’t put off making that telephone call.

  He did not come the next day, or the next, and then it was nearly a week since anyone had seen him.

  She told herself that it was just as well he had gone. She was glad that it was finished. There was no future for them. They were different kinds of people. She would get over it, just as she got over Adrian. But deep down, there was a jagged wound that was not healing at all. Part of herself had been lost. The future looked bleak and empty

  The weather echoed her feelings. Autumn was definitely in the air. Days of cold, driving rain, spinning dark gold leaves off the trees. The lake looked like an iron frying pan under the scudding clouds. Soon she must leave Ravensmere. She would never come back. It would be too painful.

  She wished she could see Mark again, just once, just to tell him ... Tell him what? Something he didn’t want to know. That she wouldn’t be going to university for a year. That she loved him?

  She wondered where he had gone. If there were girls there. He wouldn’t be long without a girl. If only she knew where he was.

  One evening she went down to the village to find his friends at the Market Cross. They were surly and hostile, blaming her for Mark’s trouble. Pete Anscomb said he didn’t know where he was—they had hardly seen him since he’d met her in Salisbury. Blackhead said he thought he’d passed him on the bypass heading towards London, but he couldn’t be sure because he was going too fast. It just looked like his bike.

  Clare’s last hope died. He had really gone then. Gone for good. He had made a break for it. A last chance to get away.

  But he was a Guardian. If the old stories were true he was in terrible danger.

  Her fear grew as the days passed. She was restless, unable to concentrate. She climbed Barrow Beacon Hill and sat for hours with the rain running down her face, staring at the mist-shrouded countryside below. Was he all right? Had something happened to him already? She tried to fight down her mounting panic. There was a brooding sense of danger, a premonition which she tried to deny, that death was coming closer to him.

  “Why don’t you go over to Kenwards?” Frances said, at the end of the week, recognizing her state.“Vivienne must have heard from him by now. Maybe he’s come back, even.”

  But Vivienne had not heard from Mark. She had no idea where he was. She was walking up and down jerkily, and she looked years older, the skin drawn tight over her cheek bones. The ashtrays were piled high and the whole room reeked of smoke. She hadn’t eaten. Clare made coffee and sandwiches for her while Vivienne talked about Mark.

  “Don’t you have anybody you can turn to? Where’s your husband?”

  Vivienne laughed.“Which one? I’ve had three
—each one worse than the last. I should never have come back here. I hate the place. Too many old, bad memories.”

  “Why did you? Come back, I mean.”

  “Oh, any number of reasons. They all seemed good at the time. The farm was here, and I always wanted to run a stables. Mad about horses always. I wanted to get away from Number Three. And besides I kept feeling that Mark should be here.” She looked sideways at Clare.“Stupid, wasn’t it?”

  “He’s a Guardian.”

  Vivienne shrugged.“I suppose. If you believe all that. But the main reason I came back— this will really make you laugh—I hoped your mother would come home one day, and that we could be friends again.” She lit a cigarette from the stub of the previous one.“Stupid, like I said. How is she? Did she say anything about me? Well of course she did.” She laughed harshly.“I suppose you heard all about how I ruined their lives.”

  Clare said evenly,“I’ve heard her story. Do you want to tell me yours?”

  “It’s so long ago. I don’t rake over old ashes.”

  “But it’s not forgotten, is it? It’s affecting everything now. I want to know what happened. What went wrong.”

  “Okay. I suppose you might as well hear it. To start with you have to understand I adored Frances. But I was jealous of her. I always felt our father loved her more than me. And that he loved her mother more than mine. Frances’ mother died from complications after Frances was born. He married my mother a year later. But she took off with an agricultural salesman when I was ten. I didn’t blame her really. Father was a lemon. Rigid, joyless. The only thing he cared for was his land and the family history. He was more stiff-necked than the Aylwards themselves. He swore the Kenwards were the original owners of Ravensmere, and the Aylwards were upstarts who came over with William the Conqueror and pinched our land.” She shrugged, grinning.“The only person he had any time for was old man Aylward himself.”

  Clare said,“Who looked after you when your mother went?”

  “Frances more or less took over, even though she was very young. She was the nearest to a real mother I ever had. We had a daily woman, but Frances had to do most of the cooking and had to learn how to run the house. She got told off if it didn’t run like clockwork. I suppose it was very unfair, but that’s what Father expected.

  “When she could get away for a few hours she was always off with Brandon Aylward. Father never seemed to worry about that. Sometimes I tried to tag along, but they didn’t want me. It was always Frances and Brandon together, never me. I was always crazy about Brandon, right from a little kid, and I was furious when they got engaged. I was sick of hearing about this fantastic wedding they were going to have. I couldn’t understand why it was taken for granted by everyone.

  “They seemed so laid back about it all. They never seemed to kiss or hold hands. I convinced myself somehow that they didn’t really love each other. They were just going along with what was expected of them—something arranged by the families. Frances always seemed so quiet and cool, she didn’t seem to be that involved. I really thought Bran would be much happier with me.

  “He used to tease me, cuddle me. I thought he had a thing about me. He was in a state that summer, smoking cannabis with his mates in Bristol, generally going crazy. There was something he was upset about. I thought it was that he didn’t want to marry Frances. It’s so easy to deceive yourself.

  “One weekend when Frances was away we had a few drinks, got a little worked up and ended up having it off together.

  “Men have always come easy to me, but Bran never really wanted me, you know. He wanted Frances. But she was frightened of getting pregnant. It was different in those days. Not easy to get contraceptives for woman if you weren’t married. And Bran would never have bothered.

  “Instead it was me. I got caught nicely. It only happened the one time with him too.” She gave her slightly hoarse, attractive laugh.“Ironic, wasn’t it? Serves me right, I suppose. But I was young. I thought you could have everything if you wanted it hard enough. I wanted Bran and I was going to be the world’s greatest show-jump champion. Fate clobbers you, you know.”

  Clare said,“Not fate. You made it happen. You brought it on yourself.”

  “Straight for the jugular. You’re your mother’s daughter all right.”

  “You could have had an abortion,” Clare said.

  Vivienne blew out a stream of smoke, watched it disappear into the ceiling and shook her head.“Not Bran’s baby.” And Clare realized with a jolt that she really had been in love with Brandon, and maybe still was.

  Vivienne got up and poured herself a glass of whisky from the decanter set out on a carved oak cupboard.

  “When he found out I was pregnant Father dragged me over to Ravensmere. God, what a scene! I’ll never forget it. Brandon was there. Old man Aylward was there. Frances was there. She was like marble. I suppose Bran had told her. He looked dreadful. I could see he hated me. I think it was then that I began to understand what I’d done.” She drew on the cigarette. Clare saw that through the smoke she had tears in her eyes.

  “Mr Aylward was angry?” Clare prompted.

  Vivienne choked with laughter.“Angry? He was like an Old Testament prophet, with his fists raised, shaking with rage. I tell you I have never before or since seen such rage. I was absolutely petrified. I thought he was going to strike me dead.

  “He was shouting that I had shattered the lives of five people, that I didn’t understand the great harm I had done, that I’d killed my father and sister’s love for me. He said I was a whore who had tempted his son and he would see me grovelling in the mud.

  My father didn’t say a word. Brandon didn’t say a word. They just stood there. It was Frances who saved me. She wasn’t frightened of him. She seemed taller, and very thin. I remember she had on a pale grey dress, and her eyes were glittering like stars. She stopped Edward Aylward. I don’t know if she frightened him, but by God, she frightened me. Every word is engraved on my memory.

  She said, ‘Don’t you call my sister a whore. It takes two to make a child. Your son has lied and betrayed. The Aylwards have broken the Trust. You are to blame for Brandon’s wildness. You neglected him while you went after money and power, wallowing in self-pity, never showing him love. Always sneering, criticizing, blaming, listening to his enemies.’ She was pointing at him, like they do in horror films, and she was almost chanting.”

  Clare shivered. She knew the sound well.

  “I’d never believed in this business of the Guardians before, but this was like some sort of cosmic battle. I’ve never been so frightened in my life, Clare. Even my father looked like death.

  “Frances said ‘I’m going now, and don’t think, Edward Aylward, I will ever come back. I swear now, upon my mother’s grave, that I will never sleep under the roof of Ravensmere. The Guardianship hasn’t passed yet; and I’m free to go. You will carry the burden alone. I will never open the Seventh Gate for you.’

  I’ll never forget his eyes. Green daggers of glass. Then they dilated, went out of focus and rolled up. I thought he was having some kind of fit, but he chucked his head back and... well, howled. ‘You are the Guardians. You have broken the Trust. My son is a dead man.”

  Clare took a deep breath, horrified.

  Vivienne said dully,“The next morning we heard that Bran was dead. My father told me to pack my bags and get out. I was crying and hysterical, but when I went to find Frances she’d already gone. Just walked out without saying goodbye even. I couldn’t believe she’d leave me just like that. And it must have hurt Edward Aylward. He loved Frances. When we were young he sometimes put her up on his horse for a ride. He had this marvellous grey stallion that I worshipped, but he never put me on the horse.”

  She lit another cigarette and coughed into the smoke.“The old man was right, of course. It was all my fault. I did ruin their lives. But honestly, Clare, I didn’t understand. It all seemed like a game to see if I could get Bran off Frances. The great love of my life, I
thought. It was just a silly game.

  “I never expected Frances to act the way she did. I thought she’d forgive me and we could all be friends again, and maybe Bran did too. But she was like iron. Like our father. And Bran was absolutely frantic. I’d never seen him like that. When he realized he’d lost her, he committed suicide. Crashed his motor bike deliberately. It was all down to me. I’ve had to live with that for twenty-one years.”

  She put the glass back on the tray and poured another drink from the decanter.

  “What about Brandon? It was his fault too,” Clare said.

  “Bran?” Vivienne smiled.“Nobody ever blamed Bran for anything. Except his father, and he always listened to that lying toad Roger Fletcher, putting in his poison. We all loved Bran. He was ... an enchanter.”

  Clare said, impatiently,“He was as much to blame as you, and he was older, so he should have known better. What did you do afterwards? How did you manage?”

  “Oh, I went to Bran’s mother’s family, the Carlton-Winters. I knew they would take me in, if only to spite Edward Aylward for what he’d done to Cecily. He just ripped her to pieces, you know.”

  “Mr Aylward said there was bad blood in that family.”

  Vivienne laughed.“Pot calling the kettle black. I’m bound to say they’re a bit wild. But they know how to live and enjoy themselves, and they’ve all got hearts as big as the Bank of England, which is more than you can say for the Aylwards. When I was seventeen Roddy Carlton-Winters married me, but we were divorced seven years ago.”

  “Didn’t Mr Aylward help at all?”

  Vivienne laughed bitterly.“After I had Mark, I went to see him. I didn’t want anything for myself, but after all, the baby was his grandson and I thought he ought to do something for Mark, like pay for his education. He told me to get out of his sight and out of the village too. He told me he wouldn’t acknowledge any misbegotten whelp of mine. He said if I stayed he’d see me off with a riding whip— and he meant every word. I never asked him again.”

  Dare stared at her. A harsh, beautiful, wilful face. The skin was taut around her mouth, laughter lines around her eyes. Life had marked her more than it had marked her mother.