‘Great stuff.’ He turned back towards the outside tap. ‘Mary’s around. She said to pop in and see her when you’re back. No hurry though, if you’re going into the village for a meal.’
‘We rather thought we’d eat here,’ said David, as they made their way out of the car. ‘We decided we’d had enough rushing around.’
‘Great stuff,’ said Rob again. ‘I recommend the sea bass. Chef’s speciality.’
‘Is that with or without chips?’ returned Carys, keeping the bantering tone.
He laughed. ‘Red wine reduction and a rhubarb jus, naturally. Got to practise for my appearance on MasterChef, whatever the punters really prefer.’
‘I think he was joking,’ whispered Carys, seeing David looked like someone heading straight for the harbour and a good dose of cod.
‘Oh, right.’ He looked faintly embarrassed. ‘You’re not into all that fine dining stuff, are you? I was looking at the leaflets earlier: Rick Stein’s restaurant in Padstow isn’t that far away.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ Carys watched a faintly hurt look pass over his face. This wasn’t David Meredith asking her out on a date, was it? Surely they’d known each other a bit too long to be doing first date stuff? Besides, it was far too soon after Joe to even think of anything like that, and especially with David Meredith. Bound to end in trouble. On the other hand… ‘I mean, I’d love to.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Only, I’m sure you have to book ages in advance.’
‘Ah.’ He grimaced. ‘I’ve a feeling that’s probably the case. But they might have a cancellation?’
Carys bit her lip. But she was determined to start as she meant to go on, and that meant being honest. ‘Would you mind if we did that another time? I’ve a feeling Mary will want to hear about everything we’ve found, and I’d quite like to leave early tomorrow with such long drive ahead, if that’s okay with you.’
‘That’s fine. No problem.’
She smiled. ‘And besides, we might be seen as casting aspersions on Mr McIntyre’s cooking skills if we hear the menu and immediately up sticks and head for a celebrity chef instead.’
David laughed. ‘Well seeing as my cooking is generally confined to beans and omelettes, I’m hardly in a position to judge.’
‘You used to be a good cook. Rhiannon taught you and Huw well, I remember. You were both much better than me.’
‘Were we? Well, I’m out of practice, I’m afraid. I’ll have to try and be more adventurous in future.’ He cleared this throat. ‘When you say another time …’
‘Don’t you want to come back?’
‘Well, yes…’
‘Great,’ said Carys. ‘We didn’t see half of the Eden Project, and I definitely want to go back to the Lost Gardens. Didn’t you just love those figures rising out of the ground? That giant’s head was amazing, and weren’t you just blown away by the woman lying there asleep? People loved them.’
‘And the estate was in far worse a state than Eden, when they started, according to the book we bought,’ added David.
‘So that’s why you were so quiet on the way back.’
He smiled. ‘Well, it did cross my mind. Wales has got its own Eden Project, but it doesn’t have a lost garden. At least, not in the north and not like Heligan. It might at least be worth looking into. Especially with Plas Eden’s statues. There’s nothing like those at all.’
‘So maybe it wasn’t a waste of time coming here, after all,’ replied Carys, as they made their way into the pub.
The Treverick Arms was quiet when they arrived, with only a few drinkers sitting in the bar. As Carys made her way back down twenty minutes later, after a quick wash and change of clothes, Mary McIntyre was chatting to an elderly couple who were also guests in the B&B.
‘Enjoy your evening,’ Mary called to her guests, who appeared to be heading to the quay for a meal and a touch of genteel nightlife.
‘Have a good time?’ enquired Mary.
‘Fascinating,’ said Carys. ‘And we’ve lots to tell you.’
‘Not exactly what I’d expected,’ said David.
‘There are always surprises when you look into the past, I’ve found.’ After handing over to the young man who appeared to be her assistant for the evening, she turned back to David and Carys.
‘Come in here,’ she said, beckoning them behind the bar. ‘We won’t be disturbed.’ She led the way into a whitewashed courtyard surrounded by pots that overflowed with the reds and blues of petunias and lobelia, mixed in with dark green sprays of rosemary, the long, slightly purple-tinged leaves of sage, clumps of chive and several varieties of mint. At one side of the courtyard a door opened into the kitchen, where they could hear the banging of pans and the murmur of voices as the preparation for the evening meals began.
‘Yes, that makes sense,’ said Mary, as they finished and Carys placed the copy of the article from the Treverick Times in front of her. ‘I suppose that’s where the story of the sound of a woman’s grief among the rocks on Treverick beach must have started.’
Carys shivered. ‘I’m glad it was calm when we went to see Treverick Gardens.’
‘And you still have no idea if there is any connection with your family at all?’ asked Mary.
David shook his head. ‘Nothing for definite. As Ann Treverick died in Ketterford, I can’t see how there can be. I just wish Dad hadn’t felt the need to keep whatever it was he was trying to find a secret. Then at least we might have known where to start. I suppose it was the madness thing. People are funny about that, aren’t they.’
‘If she was mad,’ remarked Mary, looking up from the article.
Carys blinked. ‘You mean, you think she might not have been?’
‘I think the loss of a child might drive you to the edge. But those drawings you showed me looked like the work of sanity to me.’
‘Didn’t Margaret Tyack say something like that, when we were at Ketterford?’ said David. ‘It never really struck me at the time.’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ replied Carys. ‘I didn’t think much about it either.’ She frowned at Mary. ‘But why…?’
‘Lots of reasons. Mental illness wasn’t really understood in those days. From what I’ve read people – especially women – were sent to asylums for all kinds of reasons. Postnatal depression. Menopause. Depression itself. And sometimes just for being inconvenient. Good way to get rid of a wife. Victorians didn’t get women at all. They didn’t even have a legal existence in their own right. They belonged to their father, then their husband. You didn’t even have any rights to anything that belonged to you before you were married until the divorce law was changed in the 1880s. As far as legalities was concerned before then, married women were the same as criminals, small children, and the mad. Charming, eh? Even after a law is changed, old attitudes die hard.’
‘I’m glad I live now,’ said Carys.
‘Absolutely.’ Mary smiled at her. ‘The world might not be equal still, but at least we aren’t classed as children.’ She shook her head. ‘There were supposed to be safeguards against people being incarcerated in places like this just because they were inconvenient, but if you were ruthless and powerful enough – and had enough money – you could usually get around anything.’
‘But that’s horrible!’
‘Well, from what I’ve seen in the letters and newspapers of the time, William Treverick didn’t exactly stay at home grieving. He tried to marry again after Ann died. Several times. All of them young and very wealthy.’
David frowned at her. ‘But he didn’t?’
Mary gave a wry smile. ‘This is a small community. Word gets about. I’m sure even then there were men who loved their daughters and cared for their happiness above the chance of good connections. Or had wives who made damn sure they knew their lives would be hell if they tried. I don’t think getting rid of an inconvenient wife in Ketterford did the Trevericks any good at all.’
‘Poor woman,’ sighed Carys.
‘I don’t expect we’ll ever know,’ said Mar
y. ‘Not if so many of the records at Ketterford have gone missing. He might not even have put her there under her own name in the first place. Not a thing people tend to broadcast, even nowadays. It’s fascinating, isn’t it, to see how someone begins, and how they end. Especially women. All you hear about them usually is when they are young. Hit middle age, and you vanish. As a woman, that so annoys me still. It’s experience that interests me, and how that creates someone.’
‘So when did she die?’ asked David.
Mary considered for a moment. ‘In the Edwardian era. Early nineteen-hundreds? About then, I think. To be honest, I can’t exactly remember. It’s a bit late tonight, the church will be locked. But if you’ve time tomorrow before you go, I’ll take you to see the plaque her husband put up to her.’ She smiled at the raised eyebrows. ‘Oh, it’s quite spectacular, I can assure you. Money is no object when you’ve plenty, and want to look good for the neighbours,’ she added, dryly.
‘Okay,’ said David, glancing at Carys. ‘I suppose, if nothing else, we should at least find out the end of the story.’
Carys nodded. ‘I’d like that. It’s funny; when I saw that first photograph of her, I never thought I’d grow quite fond of Ann Treverick. I suppose following her story is like getting to know her. Seeing the end would be like laying her to rest, in a way.’
Mary looked up enquiringly as her husband appeared in the doorway, phone in hand. ‘Oh dear. I knew I wouldn’t escape for long.’
Mr McIntyre coughed delicately. ‘I’d have taken a message and asked them to ring back, but she was terribly insistent that she spoke to you and our guests straight away.’
‘Oh?’ said Mary.
‘Karenza Treverick,’ said her husband. ‘She’s saying she’s found something, she won’t say what, she wants to come over tomorrow morning, and she wants to make sure it’s before David and Carys leave.’
‘Really?’ Mary’s eyes were suddenly gleaming, as she reached for the handset. ‘Well, it looks as if you might find some answers, after all.’
For a while, they left me alone to do as I pleased.
I think maybe the servants were a little afraid of me. While William dealt with his loss in his own way, which meant attending to the Treverick estate more diligently than usual. I scarcely even laid eyes on him for more than a few minutes at a time as the first frosts of winter came.
It was an unusually hard winter. In other years, being so close to the sea, Treverick had rarely been visited by snow and ice. But as I finally emerged from the listlessness that hung over me, I found myself wandering aimlessly, hour upon hour, amongst the ice-clad ponds and frosted trellises of Treverick’s garden.
Strangely, of all of them, it was Judith who chose to spend time with me. At her age, I remembered with shame, my own chatter had been about ribbons and the lace for my next dress, and whichever of the young men was handsome – and most definitely rich – in the neighbourhood.
Judith, on the other hand, was full of plans for the coming spring. For the plants she was raising in a corner of the smallest greenhouse, and for creating a wilderness for the waterfall, so that it appeared to be in truth a rushing mountain stream. She sketched her plans, endlessly. Changing them, this way and that, filling her paper with drawings as she did so.
There was a sculptor in the village. A young man with high ambitions, I believe. A passionate follower of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood – much to the outrage of Uncle Jolyon, who still cornered the vicar most Sundays on the subject of Filth Allowed to Corrupt Young Minds, and Where Would it Lead To? Although for now at least, young Mr Pawley – having been born into respectability rather than wealth – was dedicating himself to the trade of creating garden ornaments in the no less honourable pursuit of keeping a roof over his head and his belly reasonably full.
I watched for a while as Judith made her plans for Mr Pawley to follow. The nymph I thought he might enjoy. While the satyr, I had a feeling, might just get out of hand, and be banished forever into the furthest undergrowth.
I could still smile, I found. Still laugh at times too. And, strangely enough, never had the gardens seemed so beautiful. It was as if my senses had been woken. I saw, as I had never seen, the lacing of spiders’ webs across the grass, bejewelled with mist. The frost flowers icing the windows had never seemed so intricate and so marvellous. And before long my fingers were itching, Until, one day, I took up Judith’s abandoned pencil and paper, and I began to draw.
Until then, my painting had been for show. As I worked, I had heard the words of admiration that would flow once it was displayed. But now it became a passion. My existence. My way of being in the world. Each day as my confidence grew, and I became more ambitious in my attempts, I found an inner peace returning. My sorrow was still there. I saw it would be there, as part of me, for as long as I lived. But I had found a way to live again.
I should have known my peace would not last. I suppose they told him I was recovered. That I had left my room and returned to some semblance of the woman I had been before.
Whatever it was, he appeared one night at my door. I blinked at him in surprise. I had never particularly enjoyed his attentions, and since our son’s death I had been left well alone. I could not be as I had been before. I could not smile. I could not please. I could not be what he wanted me to be. At first it had stabbed me to the heart that he could not even seem to bear the exchange of a few words with me. That my lack of smiles and silly chatter seemed to disturb him. But then I had welcomed the peace his absence brought.
I looked at him in bewilderment. He seemed a little embarrassed. I’ll give him his due, my husband was not entirely lacking in brains; he had sense enough to know that I was no longer the girl he had married.
He muttered something. Something about a child. And how it would be good for me.
‘It’s too soon,’ I said quickly. Suddenly I was afraid. I could not have a child. Not now. One day, maybe. Or maybe never. But not now. Not with my grief so raw. Not with this new creature I was becoming still struggling towards life inside me. For some it might be the answer. But not for me. I knew, as clear as daylight, I would truly lose my mind.
He smiled and reached for the fastening of my nightgown. ‘You will not think that when you hold our child in your arms,’ he said.
I looked at him, this man I had married. And it was as if the final illusion fell away. I saw that for all the years we had been man and wife, I did not know him at all. No more than he did me.
I had married seeing only the envious eyes of the other girls in my circle. I had lived my life in their imaginary gaze. And he? A brutal clarity hit me at that moment. I saw without doubt that he had not chosen me for my father’s money alone. Had I not seen myself that there were heiresses in London with more dowry to bring, and far more beauty and accomplishment than I could ever boast?
No; William was a man who arranged the world according to his own comfort. He had seen that I would not demand of him, or create any disturbance in his life. He had chosen me above all others because in my indolent emptiness, he had recognised his own.
He stroked my face, his eyes soft and sentimental. As if somehow that was enough. Panic began to rise inside me. I had not seen the memorial he had had placed in Treverick church to his son, but I had heard that it was a fine one. The best money could buy. Like clothes packed away into a trunk, he had already placed Charlie in the realms of things gone by. Our son’s death was God’s will. Nothing to do with his parents’ actions, our mutual selfishness and lack of care. God had called Charlie to him, and there Charlie sat in Heaven as an angel, smiling down at us. Life could go on, just as it had done before.
Had I remained quiet, the moment would have passed, as it had always passed before and, child or no child, my body would have dragged itself on a little longer in my gilded prison. Had I struggled, he might even have shown some enthusiasm for the task. But instead, I think for that minute at least, I was truly mad. I laughed. It was a bitter laugh, but a laugh.
He paused. No longer the amorous Knight wooing his Lady. He looked affronted, clinging to his dignity like a schoolboy who had lost his footing on ice and gone sprawling headlong in the mud. There was a foolishness about him that made me laugh all the more. Wildly now, unable to stop myself.
He turned on his heels and left. Stillness descended into my room. After a while, my laughter died. Desperately, like a drowning woman, I took up my pencil and began to draw great ships sailing the oceans, their sails in full flight, until my mind settled and sanity came creeping back. This time to stay.
I thought I had defeated him. I thought I would be left alone for a little while longer at least. I thought I had time to find myself again, so that I would be ready to face this life I had chosen so blindly, and now wanted nothing more than to escape. Even though it might be to a life in poverty and disgrace, at least it would be a life.
Fool that I was I thought he would let me go. I knew so little of the world, then, and I knew nothing of pride. Of saving face. And I did not understand the power he had been given, the moment I married him, to decide my fate.
For many months William ignored my presence. Guests came and went. I heard their talk and laughter below, but I was never summoned. Judith would often escape and join me in my lonely state in my rooms. She would watch me sometimes, her eyes full of concern.
‘Could you not make your peace with William?’ she asked one evening, as we watched the sun sink beneath the horizon. Summer was in the air, with a smell of roses on the warm breeze.
‘One day, maybe,’ I replied. I had no wish to hurt her feelings. And to tell the truth, this estrangement from my husband had begun to weary me. His life was the one that continued as it had done before. For all I knew, he had taken a mistress. He would not have been the first. I was the one who remained a prisoner within Treverick Hall. By then I had given up even trying to order the carriage, or even Guinevere, my mare. The servants, I could see, had their orders. I was too proud to stamp my feet and scream. I soon grew tired of their embarrassment at my requests, and the way they avoided my eyes now, at all times.
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