by Kate Morton
While on honeymoon, time had seemed to drop away. Where once there had been hours and minutes, now only days and nights, sun and moon, existed. It was a shock when they returned to England and found the increments of time awaiting them. A shock, too, resuming life at Blackhurst. Rose had become used to privacy in Italy, and found that she now resented the presence of others. The servants, Mamma, even Eliza, someone was always lurking around corners, seeking to steal her attention from Nathaniel. Rose would have liked a house of their own, where no one would ever disturb them, but she knew there would be time enough for that. And she understood that Mamma was right: Nathaniel was better able to meet the right people from Blackhurst, and the house itself was large enough for twenty men to live comfortably.
Just as well. Rose laid her hand gently across her stomach. She suspected they would have need of a nursery before much longer. All morning Rose had felt curious, like one in possession of a special secret. She was sure that such a momentous event should be like that, a woman aware instantly of the miracle of new life inside her body. Clutching the daisy’s golden centre, Rose headed back to the house, sun glorious on her back. She wondered when she should share the secret with Nathaniel. Smiled at the thought. How excited he would be! For when they had a child, then they would be complete.
38
Cliff Cottage, 2005
And finally it seemed autumn had realised it was September. The last lingering days of summer had been pushed off stage and in the hidden garden long shadows stretched towards winter. The ground was littered with spent leaves, orange and pale green, and chestnuts in spiky coats sat proudly on the fingertips of cold branches.
Cassandra and Christian had worked all week in the cottage—untangling creepers, scrubbing mould-spotted walls, mending rotten floorboards. But because it was Friday, because each was as keen as the other, they’d agreed that the hidden garden should have some attention.
Christian was digging a hole where the southern gate had been, trying to reach the bottom of exceptionally large sandstone footings, and Cassandra had been crouched by the northern wall for two hours, pulling bracken from what must once have been a garden bed. The task reminded her of childhood weekends spent helping Nell pull weeds from her garden in Paddington, and Cassandra felt infused by a comforting sense of familiarity. She’d assembled a decent pile of leaves and roots behind her, but her pace was slowing. It was difficult not to be distracted in the hidden garden. Sliding beneath the wall was like entering a place outside time. It was the walls that did it, she supposed, though the sense of enclosure went beyond the physical. Things sounded different in here: the birds were louder and the leaves whispered in the breeze. Smells were stronger—damp fertility, sweet apples—and the air was clearer. The longer she spent in the garden, the more certain Cassandra was that she’d been right. This garden wasn’t sleeping, it was very much awake.
The sun moved slightly, casting shafts of streaky light through the creepers overhead, and a shower of tiny yellow confetti leaves rained from a nearby tree. Watching them flutter, gold in the ribbons of light, Cassandra was seized by an overwhelming urge to sketch, to capture on paper this magical contrast between light and dark. Her fingers twitched, imagining the strokes necessary to render the shafts linear, the shading required to convey transparency. The desire to sketch caught her off guard.
‘Tea break?’ On the other side of the garden Christian tossed his shovel against the wall. Lifted the bottom of his faded T-shirt and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
‘Sounds good.’ She patted her gloved hands against her jeans to shake free the dirt and fern flecks, tried not to stare at his exposed stomach. ‘Your boil or mine?’
‘Mine.’ He knelt in the patch they’d cleared in the middle of the garden, and filled a saucepan with the remaining water from his drink bottle.
Cassandra sat gingerly. A week of cleaning had left her calves stiff and her thighs sore. Not that she minded. Cassandra drew perverse pleasure from her aching body. It was the indisputable proof of her own physicality. She no longer felt invisible or fragile; she was heavier, far less likely to blow away on the breeze. And at night she fell quickly through the thick layers of sleep, woke to find night lying behind her in one solid dreamless drift.
‘How’s the maze been going?’ she said as Christian set the saucepan on the little camping stove he’d brought. ‘Over at the hotel?’
‘Not bad. Mike reckons we’ll have it cleared by winter.’
‘Even with you spending so much time here?’
Christian smiled. ‘Predictably Mike’s got quite a lot to say about that.’ He tossed the residue of morning tea from the mugs and dangled a fresh bag over each rim.
‘I hope you’re not in any trouble for helping me?’
‘Nothing I can’t handle.’
‘I really appreciate how much you’ve done, Christian.’
‘It’s nothing. I made a promise to help and I meant it.’
‘I know, and I’m really glad.’ She pulled her gloves off slowly. ‘All the same, I’ll understand if you’re too busy with other things.’
‘With my real job, you mean?’ He laughed. ‘Don’t worry, Mike’s still getting his pound of flesh.’
His real job. And there it was, the topic Cassandra had been wondering about but hitherto found herself unable to broach. Somehow though, being in the garden today, she felt infused by an unusual spirit of come-what-may. A spirit something like Nell’s. She drew an arc in the dirt with her heel. ‘Christian?’
‘Cassandra?’
‘I was just wondering,’ she drew over the arc, added an echo beneath, ‘there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, something Julia Bennett mentioned.’ She met his gaze but didn’t hold it for long. ‘Why are you here in Tregenna working for Michael instead of being a doctor in Oxford?’
When Christian didn’t answer she dared look at him again. His expression was difficult to read. He shrugged a little, smiled slightly. ‘Why are you here in Tregenna renovating a new house without your husband?’
Cassandra inhaled sharply, surprised as much as anything else. Without thinking, her fingers began their habitual worrying of her wedding band. ‘I . . . I’m . . .’ Any number of evasive answers popped like bubbles on the tip of her tongue, then she heard a voice, not quite her own: ‘I don’t have a husband. I did once, I just . . . there was an accident, Nick was—’
‘Sorry. Look, you don’t have to, I didn’t mean to—’
‘It’s okay, I—’
‘No. It’s not.’ Christian ruffled his own hair, held out the palm of his hand. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘It’s all right. I asked first.’ And in a strange way that Cassandra couldn’t articulate, even to herself, some small part of her was glad to have said the words. To have spoken Nick’s name was a relief, made her feel less guilty somehow, that she was still here and he was not. That she was here, now, with Christian.
The saucepan was jiggling on the stove top, the water spitting. Christian tipped it sideways to fill the mugs, then tossed a teaspoon of sugar into each and stirred quickly. He handed one to Cassandra.
‘Thanks.’ She wrapped her fingers around the warm tin and blew gently across its surface.
Christian took a sip, wincing as he burned his tongue.
Noisy silence stretched between them and Cassandra clutched at topical threads to weave the conversation back together. Caught none that seemed suitable.
Finally Christian spoke. ‘I think your grandma was lucky not to know her past.’
Cassandra used the tip of her little finger to drag a fallen leaf fragment from her tea.
‘It’s a gift, don’t you reckon, to be able to look forward and not back?’
She pretended interest in the rescued leaf. ‘In some ways.’
‘In most ways.’
‘Awful to forget the past entirely though.’
‘Why?’
She glanced sideways, trying to ascertain whether or n
ot he was being serious. No humour lurked in his expression. ‘Because then it would be like it never happened.’
‘But it did, nothing can change that.’
‘Yeah, but you wouldn’t remember it.’
‘So?’
‘So . . .’ She flicked the leaf aside and shrugged lightly. ‘You need memories to keep things from the past alive.’
‘That’s what I’m saying. Without memories everyone could just get on with it. Move on.’
Cassandra’s cheeks flared and she hid behind a gulp of tea. Then another. Christian was coaching her on the importance of relegating the past to history. She expected it from Nell and Ben, had learned to nod sombrely when any of the aunts expressed similar sentiments, but this was different. She had been feeling so positive, so much lighter than usual, her outlines clear where they were usually smudged. She’d been enjoying herself. She wondered when precisely he’d pegged her as a lost cause in need of help. She felt embarrassed and, more than that, disappointed somehow.
She took another sip of tea and sneaked a glance at Christian. His attention was occupied by a stick he was threading with dried autumn leaves, and his expression was difficult to read. Preoccupied certainly, but more than that: distracted, distant, lonely.
‘Christian—’ ‘I met Nell once, you know.’
She was caught off guard. ‘My grandma, Nell?’
‘I presume it was her. Can’t think who else it would have been, and the dates seem about right. I was eleven, so it must’ve been 1975. I’d come up here to get away, and I was just disappearing under the wall when someone grabbed my foot. I didn’t realise it was a person at first, I thought for a second that my brothers had been telling the truth when they said the cottage was haunted, that some ghost or witch was going to turn me into a toadstool.’ His lips twitched into half a smile, and he crunched a leaf in his fist, sprinkling the debris onto the ground. ‘But it wasn’t a ghost, it was an old woman with a strange accent and a sad face.’
Cassandra pictured Nell’s face. Had it been sad? Formidable, yes, not given to unnecessary warmth, but sad? She couldn’t tell; its familiarity made such critique impossible.
‘She had silver hair,’ he said, ‘tied up high.’
‘In a knot.’
He nodded, smiled slightly then tipped his mug upside down to empty the dregs. Tossed his threaded stick aside. ‘Are you any closer to solving her mystery for her?’
Cassandra exhaled slowly; there was definitely something unsettled about Christian this afternoon. His mood reminded her of the shafts of light filtering through the creepers. It was ungraspable, shimmering, changeable somehow. ‘Not really. Rose’s scrapbooks didn’t contain the revelation I hoped they might.’
‘No entry entitled: “why Eliza might someday take my child”?’ He smiled.
‘Unfortunately not.’
‘At least you’ve had some interesting bedtime reading.’
‘If only I didn’t fall asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.’
‘It’s the sea air,’ said Christian, standing up and fetching his shovel once again. ‘It’s good for the soul.’
That felt true enough. Cassandra stood too. ‘Christian,’ she said, shaking her gloves, ‘about the scrapbooks.’
‘Yeah?’
‘There’s something I hoped you might be able to help me with. A sort of mystery.’
‘Oh yeah?’
She glanced at him, a little wary given his earlier avoidance of the subject. ‘It’s a medical question.’
‘Okay.’
‘Rose mentions some marks on her stomach. From what I can gather they’re quite large, noticeable enough that they embarrass her, and early on she has a couple of consultations about them with her doctor, Ebenezer Matthews.’
He shrugged apologetically. ‘Skin wasn’t really my specialty.’
‘What was?’
‘Oncology. Does Rose give you anything more to go on? Colour, size, type, quantity?’
Cassandra shook her head. ‘She wrote in euphemisms for the most part.’
‘Typical Victorian prudery.’ He walked the shovel back and forth on the ground while he thought. ‘They could be anything really. Scars, pigmentation marks—does she mention any surgery?’
‘Not that I can remember. What sort of surgery?’
He lifted one hand to the side. ‘Well, off the top of my head, it could have been appendicitis, her kidneys or lungs may have needed operating on.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Hydatids maybe. Is it likely she’d been near any farms?’
‘There were farms on the estate.’
‘It’s definitely the most common reason a Victorian child would’ve had abdominal surgery.’
‘What is it exactly?’
‘A parasite, tapeworm. It lives in dogs but has a part of its cycle in humans or sheep. It usually settles in the kidney or liver, but sometimes winds up in the lungs.’ He looked up at her. ‘It fits, but I’m afraid, short of asking her or finding more information in the scrapbooks, I doubt you’ll ever know for sure.’
‘I’ll have another look this afternoon, see if I missed something.’
‘And I’ll keep thinking about it.’
‘Thanks. But don’t go to any trouble, it’s really just a curiosity.’ She pulled her gloves on, locked the joins of her fingers together to tighten them.
Christian dug the shovel into the dirt a few times. ‘There was too much death.’
Cassandra looked at him.
‘My job, oncology; it was too relentless. The patients, the families, the loss. I thought I’d be able to handle it, but it builds up, you know? Over time?’
Cassandra thought of Nell’s last days, the ghastly sterile smell of the hospital, the cold, blank gaze of the walls.
‘I was never cut out for it, really. I figured that much when I was still at university.’
‘You didn’t think of changing your degree?’
‘I didn’t want to disappoint my mum.’
‘She wanted you to be a doctor?’
‘I don’t know.’ His eyes met hers. ‘She died when I was a kid.’
And then Cassandra understood. ‘Cancer.’ Understood, too, why he was so keen to forget the past. ‘I’m so sorry, Christian.’
He nodded, watched as a black bird flew low overhead. ‘Looks like rain. When the rooks swoop like that, there’s rain coming.’ He smiled shyly, as if to apologise for the swift change of topic. ‘Meteorology has nothing on Cornish folklore.’
Cassandra picked up her gardening fork. ‘I reckon we work another half-hour then call it a day.’
Christian looked at the ground suddenly, and stubbed his boot against the earth. ‘You know, I was going to get a drink at the pub on the way home.’ He glanced at her. ‘I don’t suppose, that is, I wonder if you’d like to come?’
‘Sure,’ she heard herself say. ‘Why not?’
Christian smiled and his face seemed to relax. ‘Great. That’s great.’
A fresh, moist gust of salty breeze brought an elm leaf drifting down to land on Cassandra’s head. She brushed it off and returned her attention to her bracken patch, dug the little gardening fork beneath a long thin root and tried to wrestle it from the ground. And she smiled to herself, though she wasn’t quite sure why.
A band had been playing at the pub so they’d stayed and ordered pies and chips. Christian told self-deprecating stories about being back at home with his dad and stepmum, and Cassandra divulged some of Nell’s eccentricities: her refusal to use a potato peeler because it couldn’t trim as close as she could with a knife, her habit of adopting other people’s cats, the way she’d had Cassandra’s wisdom teeth set in silver and turned into a pendant. Christian had laughed, and the sound so pleased Cassandra that she found herself laughing too.
It was dark when he finally dropped her back at the hotel, the air thick with mist so that the car’s headlights glowed yellow.
‘Thank you,’ said Cassandra as she hopped out. ‘I had a good time.
’ And she had. An unexpectedly good time. Her ghosts had been with her, as ever, but they hadn’t sat so close.
‘I’m glad you came.’
‘Yeah. Me too.’ Cassandra smiled against her shoulder, waited a moment, then closed the door. Waved as his car disappeared into the fog.
‘Phone message,’ said Samantha, waving a small slip of paper as Cassandra entered the foyer. ‘Been out, have you?’
‘The pub, yeah.’ Cassandra took the paper, ignored Samantha’s raised brows.
Phone call from Ruby Davies, it read. Coming to Cornwall on Monday. Booked to stay at the Blackhurst Hotel. Expecting progress report!
Cassandra felt a wave of genuine pleasure. She would be able to show Ruby the cottage and the scrapbooks and the hidden garden. Ruby, she knew, was someone who would understand how special they all were. She would like Christian, too.
‘Someone dropped you home then, did they? Looked like Christian Blake’s car.’
‘Thanks for the message,’ said Cassandra with a smile.
‘Not that I got much of a look,’ Samantha called as Cassandra disappeared up the stairs. ‘I wasn’t spying or anything.’
Back in her room, Cassandra ran a hot, deep bath and tossed in some lavender salts Julia had found for her sore muscles. She took the scrapbooks with her and laid them on a dry towel spread across the tiled floor. Careful to keep her left hand dry for page turning, she eased into the tub, sighing with pleasure as the silky water surrounded her, then leaned against the porcelain side and opened the first scrapbook, hopeful that some missed detail about Rose’s marks would jump out.
