A Secret Garden: An utterly gorgeous feel good romance

by Katie Fforde

  ‘But I’ve been asking you out for meals for ages and you never come! I only got you as far as the pub once! You always end up feeding me.’

  Lorna laughed. ‘If I went out to lunch I’d have to change. As it is I’ll just get the worst of the mud off and then eat soup and bread. Lucien provided the bread so it should be delicious.’

  ‘Sounds perfect!’ said Jack.

  Jack was outside her house, waiting for her. Because she’d known he’d have to hang around while she put away her gardening tools she’d given him her keys. But she was obscurely pleased that he hadn’t used them.

  ‘You should have gone in and made yourself at home,’ she said.

  ‘That would have felt wrong. And it’s a lovely spot.’ He indicated the parkland that the house looked over. ‘No hardship to wait for you.’

  Something about the way he said it made her wonder about what Philly had said. Did he like her in that way? Or was he just friendly and polite? As she took the keys from him and put them in the lock she allowed herself to think about him liking her in the way Philly had meant.

  ‘Come in. Go and warm up in the kitchen. I’ll just do some basic scraping and scrubbing then we can have soup. You could stir it,’ she added. ‘That would be helpful.’ She put the bread on the counter. ‘The bread knife is up there if you want to cut some.’

  She came back into the kitchen smelling strongly of gardeners’ hand cream. She had deliberately not given her face more than a cursory check for mud as she didn’t want to risk obsessing over what she looked like at the moment, practically make-up-free. Usually she was fairly content with her appearance. But now, having allowed the thought of going out with a younger man to enter her mind, she knew she had to hold her nerve.

  Jack was whistling softly, having found plates and bowls and cut some bread. The bowls he had put on the Rayburn, next to the soup, possibly to warm them up.

  ‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ she said.

  ‘You haven’t.’ He smiled at her. ‘Why don’t you sit down? You’ve been working all morning.’

  ‘Haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he acknowledged. ‘But not physically. Let yourself be waited on.’

  ‘Oh, OK,’ she said, and seated herself at the table. She felt strangely relaxed. She should feel hostessy and anxious but somehow it felt fine him putting a bowl of soup down in front of her and then the butter, hidden in a handmade dish with a cover.

  He sat down opposite her. ‘Did you get up at the crack of dawn to make this soup?’ he said, having taken a sip.

  ‘No. I did get up early, but to go to work, not to make soup. I threw the things together while I made tea this morning.’

  ‘It’s delicious. I love those beany, pulsy things but I never leave enough time to cook them.’

  She took the lid off the butter dish and pushed it towards Jack. When they’d both had some she spread her bread. ‘It’s just a bit of forethought. What’s the bread like?’

  ‘Delicious!’

  ‘Well, we’ll get an opportunity to buy it if Lucien is ever sufficiently satisfied with it to put it on Philly and Seamus’s stall.’

  ‘He obviously has very high standards if this isn’t good enough for him,’ said Jack.

  ‘I think he’s a bit obsessive,’ said Lorna.

  ‘All good artists or craftsmen are,’ said Jack.

  ‘Are you?’

  He laughed. ‘That’s a loaded question!’

  ‘You did rather set yourself up for it.’

  ‘I did.’ He paused, holding her gaze. ‘I am obsessive. There is nothing I won’t do to get the end result I’m after. I don’t care how many setbacks I come across.’

  She looked down, finding her soup unexpectedly fascinating. ‘I suppose I’m like that too. I never think “that’ll do”. It has to be as good as I can make it.’ She ate the soup and looked up. ‘So, tell me about being a stonemason. I know a bit about being a sculptor – I went to art school and did sculpture myself for a little while until I wanted something more secure and discovered gardening. But the stonemason bit is unknown to me. What does it entail?’

  He didn’t answer immediately and she began to wonder if she’d said something she shouldn’t. Then he caught her gaze again and said, ‘I think I should show you. I think I should take you round the abbey and show you what a mason does, and has done for thousands of years.’

  ‘Well,’ she said a few seconds later, ‘that would be lovely. After all, we’re having this sculpture trail in aid of the abbey. It would be good to see what we’re raising the money for.’

  ‘I’d love to show you. When would be a good time?’

  ‘I expect you’re very busy…’

  ‘I can make time for this. It’s important. You’re busy too.’

  Lorna thought this conversation could go on quite a long time if she didn’t do something to stop it. ‘What about this afternoon? I was going to research plants but I can do that this evening.’

  ‘I was hoping to take you out this evening. For dinner.’

  ‘I think taking me to see your abbey this afternoon will do for today?’

  He laughed ruefully. ‘I keep being thwarted. I wanted to take you out the other day and we had fish and chips. I would have taken you for lunch now, and you invited me here. Please don’t tell me you have to work this evening!’

  ‘I definitely should! But why don’t we play it by ear? I may start to fall asleep by this evening. I was up very early.’

  He laughed. ‘OK. As long as you promise that sometime you’ll let me take you out for dinner!’

  She laughed too but made no promises. It was fun to be courted and she didn’t want him to get bored with her.

  13

  Jack parked the car in the staff car park, tucked away among the backstreets of the town. As always when she saw it, Lorna thought how beautiful the abbey was. It had once been very important and some past abbot had managed to do a deal with Henry VIII and so it had missed the worst of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It was Perpendicular Gothic and had famous fan-vaulted ceilings. Being responsible for such an ancient building was a big job. Seeing it for the first time properly since she’d known Jack made Lorna see the carved golden stone with new respect.

  ‘We’ll take a quick look in at the workshop,’ said Jack, ‘and then I’ll give you a tour of the abbey.’

  He locked his car and then led her away from the abbey to a separate building. ‘Here we are.’

  He opened the door to a workshop filled with sound. There were three people there, all working hard. They all stopped when they saw them.

  ‘Hey, Boss. I didn’t think you were in today,’ said one, a serious-looking young man wearing several jumpers and a woolly hat. She realised it was cold. Considering it was now properly spring, this was a bit of a surprise. Then she realised that the stone walls probably meant the temperature was always on the cool side.

  ‘I’m just showing Lorna round. Lorna, this is the team.’

  As he introduced her to them she realised it was clear how much they liked and respected him. He exchanged a few words with one of them while she looked around her. It was like many workshops: the walls were hung with tools; saws, chisels, hammers, mallets, all in many shapes and sizes. They were dressed for the cold and all had masks hung round their necks. The local radio station played in the background.

  Jack went across to one man, hardly more than a boy, and talked to him quietly about the stone he was chipping away at.

  Then he came back to Lorna. ‘Ready for your tour?’

  ‘Of course I have been in here before,’ said Lorna as they stood in the abbey porch. ‘But not since I first came to the area.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘About three years ago.’

  ‘I don’t expect it’s changed much, except the bit that really needs repair. There’s a major tomb awaiting restoration and part of the roof that needs doing. But it all needs attention really.’

  ‘You
mean, it’s deteriorated more?’

  He laughed softly. ‘No! Some of it’s been restored already.’

  He opened the inner door to the abbey and the sound of singing drifted towards them. Lorna instantly halted. Jack whispered, ‘It’s all right. We won’t disturb them. It’s a visiting choir rehearsing.’

  Lorna listened as the cadences moved back and forth between the two sides of the choir. Rising and falling, loud and then soft. ‘Is that Byrd?’ she breathed.

  ‘It may well be. We can find out later, if you like. They’re good.’

  Neither of them moved until the piece came to an end and the conductor said something to the choir and the spell was broken.

  ‘That was lovely!’ she said to Jack, still very quietly.

  ‘Wasn’t it? Now, let me show you round.’

  ‘I really don’t want to disturb the rehearsal,’ she said, indicating the singers in the choir stalls.

  ‘It’s all right. Where we’re going we won’t do that.’

  When Lorna had first visited the abbey on moving to the area, it had been fairly full of a party of Japanese tourists. She’d gone round quickly, enjoying the general magnificence of it, but not really feeling much. The fact it was nearly empty, the music, and a chance shaft of sunlight that made the ancient stone flags golden made it quite different now. She felt she’d gone back in time. The thought of all the people who’d come here over the years, with their sorrows and their celebrations, brought a lump to her throat.

  Jack took her hand, as if to hurry her along. ‘This way.’

  He led her out through a side door and along the outside of the building.

  ‘It’s so huge!’ said Lorna, partly so he would let go of her hand. She liked the feel of her hand in his large, roughened one, but it was embarrassing.

  ‘It was built on wool, really.’

  ‘You mean, it was a wool church?’

  ‘That’s right. They had them here and in East Anglia. It’s a pity wool doesn’t raise as much money now as it did then!’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘Didn’t they make people have woollen shrouds in those days? A never-ending market.’ She smiled.

  He returned her smile warmly. ‘Come and see why we need so much money.’ He opened a door that went back into the abbey. ‘It’s a chapel that’s a memorial to the scions of a very wealthy family. It was their tomb.’

  It was hugely elaborate. It was as if the couple were lying in a huge, stone four-poster bed. But although they appeared to be sharing a bed they seemed very separate from each other. Their hands were steepled as if in prayer. Elaborately carved pillars supported an equally elaborate canopy. The only thing that for Lorna showed a bit of humanity was a small dog crouched at the feet of his master.

  ‘This is the one that needs restoring.’

  ‘Mm, I like the little dog,’ Lorna said. She did like the dog but she found the tomb a bit over the top. It was a vehicle for showing off. ‘The rest is a bit…’

  ‘Vulgar? Ostentatious?’ suggested Jack.

  She smiled, not wanting to confess she didn’t like it even though he was inviting her to do so.

  ‘The dog is definitely the best bit,’ she said instead. ‘He looks like a real dog. I wonder if he was one they had in real life?’

  ‘I hope so. I copied it very carefully from an engraving of the tomb.’

  ‘You did the dog?’ She turned to him in astonishment. ‘You mean it’s not ancient?’

  ‘No. It had been very badly restored in Victorian times. We were lucky that there were earlier records. They’d used entirely the wrong sort of stone.’

  ‘Oh, well, he’s adorable! So lifelike. You feel you know exactly what a cheerful little dog he’d have been.’

  ‘Thank you. But this is what we need the money for.’ He took her arm and led her away from the chapel to an area under a window.

  Lorna looked at what he indicated and sighed. Here was a much simpler tomb.

  ‘This is much earlier, as you can see,’ said Jack. ‘Fourteenth century.’

  There was no elaborate carving. The figures were in long robes, their heads on stone pillows, and they were holding hands.

  For the second time since she’d been in the abbey Lorna felt her throat close with emotion. ‘It’s like that Philip Larkin poem. These two look as if they really loved each other.’

  ‘“An Arundel Tomb”,’ said Jack, nodding. ‘It always makes me think of that, too. “They would not think to lie so long…”’

  ‘That’s not the last line though?’

  ‘“What will survive of us is love”,’ he said promptly. ‘But I don’t think Larkin was as sentimental about his tomb as I am about this one here.’

  Lorna stood there, looking at the stone couple. The woman’s face was hardly there and the man’s legs were badly damaged.

  ‘These were restored before, too,’ said Jack.

  ‘Wrong stone?’

  He nodded. ‘This abbey was made from Minchinhampton stone but that’s all gone now. We need to go to France to get stone that’s the same. There’s a huge seam of it that goes under the Channel to the Cotswolds.’

  They stood in silence for a few moments. Lorna was lost in her imagination, and also thinking how nice it was to find someone who understood her points of reference.

  ‘Come on. I’ve got some other things to show you.’

  She followed him to a spot that had what looked like a shelf attached to a section of wall.

  ‘This is a mason’s bracket,’ Jack explained. ‘It’s thought to be a copy of the one on Gloucester Cathedral. Look up.’

  She looked and saw what seemed to be a youth with outstretched arms, falling through the air. There was a man reaching out, as if trying to catch him.

  ‘I’m not sure I quite understand what I’m looking at,’ she said.

  ‘There are two interpretations of this bracket,’ Jack said. ‘It could just be that the apprentice mason has fallen to his death, but imagine if the master mason was also his father?’

  ‘I can’t imagine how dreadful,’ she said. ‘I have a son myself. How awful if I’d somehow sent him to his death. Like Kipling, making his son go to war, when the boy was desperately short-sighted and could have got out of it.’

  ‘Hundreds of men must have died in the building of this abbey – all the great cathedrals.’

  She felt suddenly chilled.

  He took her elbow again and they walked together. He was taller than her and, being tall herself, this was pleasant and a bit unusual. She paused in front of a quirky little statue she had almost not noticed. ‘What’s this?’

  He laughed. ‘That’s an example of hubris. It’s a caricature, of me and by me. It’s a tradition of masons, to leave an image of themselves behind.’

  ‘It’s charming but not flattering,’ Lorna said.

  Jack had stopped in front of a tiny door set in the foot of a tower. Lorna hesitated. She was fine going up but had always struggled with going down spiral staircases, especially if they were confined. Should she tell him? Or maybe she’d grown out of it? After all, phobias don’t necessarily last forever. She found she didn’t want to disappoint him. He’d invited her into his world. She wanted to be able to share it.

  As she had thought, she was fine going up the narrow, twisting steps. It was dark but Jack lit the way with a torch on his key ring. She had no trouble finding the steps and putting her feet on them, even if they were narrow and the space restricted. She even felt proud that she managed to keep up with him without audibly panting. At least her job as a gardener kept her fit. When they got to the top he opened a little door that opened out on to a lead-lined roof. You could see the roof of the abbey, the many towers and parapets and, beyond them, the town.

  ‘Oh, this is lovely!’ she said.

  ‘It’s one of my favourite bits that the rest of the world doesn’t see,’ said Jack. ‘They don’t usually bring people here on the tours. The staircase is too narrow for some of them. It’s a bit p
rivate.’

  Now was the moment to confess, Lorna told herself, to say that sometimes she had a problem going down spiral staircases. They didn’t have to be spiral, either. She’d had a terrible time getting down the Rock of Gibraltar when she’d gone there as a student. It was the repetitive nature of it, one foot after another, time after time. It made her dizzy.

  He opened the door and stood back for her to go past.

  ‘No, actually, would you go first?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, OK. Would you like the torch? I pretty much know my way without it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, praying that this time she would be fine.

  She’d gone about three steps, her shoulder pressed against the wall, the torch lighting the next step, when it slipped out of her hand and skittered all the way down to the bottom of the staircase.

  Lorna’s mouth went dry.

  ‘Are you OK?’ came Jack’s voice quite a lot further down the steps than she was.

  ‘Not really. I’ve dropped the torch.’

  ‘I know.’ He hesitated. ‘Can you manage without it?’

  ‘No.’ It was a squeak. ‘I’m a bit claustrophobic.’

  There was a pause in which he didn’t comment that it was a bit late to say that and she silently thanked him. She was terrified and desperately embarrassed. Although it was dark she closed her eyes and clung to the rail, certain she would have to stay there for the rest of her life. They’d never get the fire brigade up here.

  ‘OK.’ It was Jack, right by her. ‘Can you move?’

  She shook her head and then whimpered.

  He went on. ‘As I see it, you can either bump down on your bottom, step by step, or I can carry you down.’

  ‘You couldn’t carry me down. I’m far too heavy.’

  He laughed. ‘I mean in a fireman’s lift, over my shoulder. It’ll be a squash but you won’t be too heavy.’

  ‘I’ll try bumping down.’ Clinging to the wall she bent her knees until she was squatting but then found she couldn’t let herself move her feet so she could sit on the step.

  He took hold of her arm. ‘Just shuffle forward so you’re sitting.’