‘Tilda?’
‘Yes?’
‘Did your mum talk about your father’s death?’
They were walking in the orchard now, the silvery moon making beautiful twisted shadows on the grass.
‘She did nothing but talk,’ Tilda said. ‘Dad wasn’t just her husband, he was her best friend. We were all so close and there were never any secrets. We all knew what was happening and Mum was amazing when he died. She’s always been good like that – talking about emotions. The only thing she’s never been good at is talking about money. She tends to bury her head a bit when it comes to financial difficulties. It was my idea to sell the north wing. She’d never have thought of doing that.’
‘Then I have you to thank?’
‘I suppose.’
‘Were things always difficult for your family here? I mean financially?’
‘Well, it’s not cheap running a place like Orley.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘The utility bills are horrendous and you don’t even want to imagine the repair bills just to keep everything intact. So it’s always been a struggle, but it became more difficult after Dad died. He took care of all the books and managed the land.’
‘It must have been hard on your mum.’
‘It was. Financially as well as emotionally. For a while, we had some money coming in from my singing, but Dad got ill around the time I retired from that life and Mum refused to use the money anyway. I paid for a few things on the sly like new guttering, repointing a wall and a chimney repair, but I knew we needed to do something to raise significant funds.’
They were quiet for a moment, standing under the apple trees together, letting their thoughts drift. Laurence could hardly believe what Tilda had just told him. What a great burden she’d been carrying – the very future of Orley Court. And no wonder she found it impossible to contemplate going back into the music industry. She no doubt associated the whole bad experience of being in the spotlight with the awful time of her father’s illness. Was that why she was hiding herself away at Orley? He couldn’t really blame her.
He looked out beyond the walls of the garden to the hills and the sky again. His father might have travelled the world with the navy and spent months hiking through the Peruvian rainforest, but Laurence was pretty sure that there weren’t many views that could rival this one – a glorious English landscape.
‘Hey,’ he suddenly said as he remembered something. ‘What was your mum doing out in the garden with those people yesterday?’
‘What people?’
‘There was a whole group of young people. I think they were working here in the walled garden.’
‘Really?’
‘You didn’t see them?’
She shook her head. ‘I was out teaching most of the day. I teach at a couple of local schools one day a week,’ she explained. ‘So, what was going on?’
‘Well, I think they were gardening.’
Tilda frowned. ‘We can’t afford a team of gardeners.’
‘Work experience students?’
‘I don’t know,’ Tilda said. ‘Mum said she had plans for the walled garden. I’ll have to find out what’s she’s up to.’ She stomped her feet in her wellies. ‘Are you done with the stargazing yet because my feet have turned to ice!’
He laughed. ‘Let’s get back inside.’
They left the walled garden, stumbling a little as the moon went behind a bank of cloud.
‘I didn’t bring a torch,’ Tilda hissed. ‘Did you?’
‘I don’t think I even own a torch,’ Laurence said.
‘Well, you’d better get one fast if you’re going to live here for any length of time. We get our share of power cuts, you know.’
‘Ouch!’
‘What was that?’ she asked.
‘I walked into something hard.’
‘One of the galvanised planters. It’ll be safer if we walk on the grass.’
‘Where is the grass?’ Laurence felt Tilda’s hand reach for his; she guided him away from the path and he felt the soft wetness of the grass beneath his trainers. ‘You’ve done this before, haven’t you?’
‘What – dragged clueless Londoners around our garden in the middle of the night?’
He laughed. ‘Just get me back in one piece. I think there was a pond around here, wasn’t there?’
‘It’s more of a puddle.’
‘I still don’t want to end up in it.’
A second later, the garden was flooded with moonlight once again as the clouds dispersed across the heavens. Laurence felt relief fill him but, as Tilda dropped his hand, he wished that the moon had been elusive for a little longer.
‘Nearly there,’ she said, leading the way back onto the path and reaching the front door at last.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’ve really enjoyed talking to you tonight.’
She looked up at him, her eyes wide as she smiled. ‘Me too. I’ve enjoyed talking to you.’
‘We’ll have to do it again sometime.’
‘Although maybe not in the middle of a freezing-cold night.’ She opened the door and they went inside. Tilda took off her boots and Laurence returned the ripped coat to its peg.
‘Tilda?’
‘Yes?’
Laurence paused, hoping he was doing the right thing. ‘I know it’s not my place. I know we’ve just met, but I have to say this.’
‘Say what?’
‘You have a real talent. You’ve been out into the world and proved it. You can’t turn your back on it.’
‘But I already have,’ she said, her voice sounding darker.
‘I don’t believe that,’ he said. ‘You’re much too young to bury yourself out here in the countryside. The world needs people like you. Young, vibrant, talented people.’
‘No it doesn’t. It gobbles them up and spits them out.’
‘Well, if it does, you’ve got to learn to spit back.’
She grimaced. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You mustn’t give up on your dreams, Tilda. Not ever.’
She shook her head as if dismissing him. ‘And what are your dreams, Laurence?’
‘Mine?’ he said, shocked by her question.
‘Yes – yours. You accuse me of burying myself in the countryside. Well, isn’t that exactly what you’re doing?’
‘No,’ he insisted. ‘It isn’t. I didn’t come here to bury myself. I came here to find myself.’
‘Oh, really? You think that leaving London for some obscure little hamlet in the middle of nowhere is going to help you find yourself?’
‘Yes, I really do,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I wasn’t talking about myself. I was talking about you.’
‘Yes, well, I don’t want to talk about me, okay?’
‘What would your father have wanted, Tilda? He surely wouldn’t have wanted you to give up on your great talent?’
For a moment, Tilda looked completely stunned and her mouth dropped open but no words came out.
‘I’m sorry,’ Laurence quickly said, realising he’d overstepped the mark.
‘How dare you talk about my father! You have no right to do that.’
‘I know I don’t. I’m just trying to help here.’
‘Well, you can help by keeping your nose out of things. Just because you live here now, it doesn’t give you the right to interfere in our lives.’
Laurence watched in dismay as she stormed across the hallway and ran up the stairs. He let out a long slow sigh. How on earth did he keep messing things up with Tilda?
Chapter 11
‘You’re not standing right,’ Jasmine said. ‘You’re all hunched. You’ll make yourself ache before you’ve even got any colour on the canvas.’
Marcus flinched as he felt Jassy’s hands on his shoulders.
‘You’ve got to loosen up. Do some stretches. Roll your shoulders. Wiggle your wrists.’
‘Wiggle my wrists?’
She nodded. ‘Wiggle your wrists. Go on!’
/>
‘Has anybody ever told you that you’re really bossy?’
‘Uh-huh,’ she said, ‘and I’m really bad-tempered if people don’t do as I tell them.’
Marcus snorted. ‘I’ve never met anyone like you before.’
‘I’m one of a kind. Mum’s always saying that. Dad used to say it too.’
‘I can believe it,’ Marcus said.
Jassy gave a little shrug and then returned to her own canvas.
‘Actually, you’re a bit like my dad,’ she suddenly said.
‘Am I?’
‘A bit. Not just because you’re a man and you’re a lot older than me. You – you let me say things to you and you don’t get cross or upset. Mum and Tilda – they always try to calm me down, but Dad never did. Dad listened to everything I said, even if I shouted or got a bit hyper. I miss that. I miss him.’
Marcus looked at her as she painted, taking in the earnest expression on her face. He liked this girl. He liked her a lot.
‘Grandma lets me get good and mad too,’ she said. ‘She knows I sometimes need to get things outside of me, and she never interrupts when I’m like that. But she’s been different recently. We used to talk loads, but she’s gone all quiet. I think she misses Dad. I tried to persuade her to take up painting, but she said painting was my thing.’
Jassy was painting a still life of a group of old glass bottles that had been found in a corner of the garden one year when they’d cleared away a dead shrub. They were beautiful things. Some were tall and some short, some a very clear green and others an opaque white. Marcus was doing his best to paint them too, only he was struggling. Perhaps his eyesight was going, he thought. Or perhaps he just wasn’t very good at this art business. He’d done a bit of sketching during his time in the navy, picking up a pencil and pad whenever he had a spare moment, but he’d never painted before.
It was funny. He hadn’t planned on painting with Jassy that morning, but he’d woken early and had been walking in the gardens when he’d heard music drifting over from the oast house. It was classical music. Something with strings. Vivaldi, perhaps, he wasn’t sure.
When he’d knocked lightly on the door, Jassy’s bright voice called him inside and she’d immediately thrust an apron at him.
‘Wear this,’ she’d said. And that was it.
One thing was certain about painting: it made you focus on the thing you were doing – the image before you. It made you concentrate and that meant the mind was full and unable to dwell on anything else, and that was good. That was exactly what Marcus needed and what he’d been lacking in recent months. When he’d gone travelling, he’d found a certain element of escape, but travel necessitated long times in airports and tedious journeys by plane, train and bus, and that meant that the mind would drift. His certainly had and it had filled with images he’d rather not have entertained. So was that why his feet kept finding their way to the oast house? Had Jassy helped him to find oblivion at last?
He turned to look at her now. Her hair was piled on top of her head, its curls wildly exploding and giving her the look of the Medusa – there was a paintbrush in there somewhere too, and another between her teeth. He wanted to laugh, but thought he’d better not.
‘Concentrate!’ she said, growling at him through the paintbrush.
‘I am,’ he protested. ‘My brain’s going to explode if I concentrate anymore.’ He shook his head. He just couldn’t get the shape of these bottles right, and what made matters even worse was that Jassy had placed a mirror behind them which meant that they had to paint not one but two groups of the blooming things.
‘I thought painting was meant to be relaxing,’ he said.
‘That,’ Jassy said, removing the paintbrush from her mouth, ‘is a common misconception. It is never relaxing – not if you’re doing it right. You should be focused, and that’s always hard.’
Marcus nodded. ‘Focused,’ he repeated as if that might help him.
He was just managing to capture what he thought was the essence of one particular bottle when a cat ran into the oast house.
‘Hey, kitty!’ Marcus said.
‘That’s Skinny,’ Jassy said. ‘Don’t encourage her. She doesn’t live here.’
‘But she’s always hanging around. I keep seeing her in the garden.’
‘I know.’
‘She doesn’t belong to you?’
‘Nope,’ Jassy said.
‘You don’t want to keep her?’
Jassy shook her head and Marcus turned back to the black cat, who looked horribly thin.
‘She needs feeding up.’ He turned to Jassy, whose eyes were narrowed in concentration. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘Probably,’ she said.
‘I might take her in with me.’ He put his brush down.
‘What, now?’
He bent down, putting a hand out for the cat to sniff. She seemed friendly enough, and her eyes were a beautiful green just like one of the bottles he’d failed to capture.
‘I could paint you,’ he told the cat as he scooped her up in his arms. ‘One day. If I improve.’
‘Where are you going?’ Jassy asked.
‘I’m going to find Skinny some food. I’ll be back later.’
‘Don’t let your brushes dry out!’
‘I won’t, teacher,’ he said, smiling as he left the oast house with the cat in his arms.
The spring sunshine was pleasantly warm on his back as he walked to the house.
‘I think I’ve got a tin of tuna in the cupboard,’ he said. ‘How would you like that?’ The cat purred as he stroked her soft fur. ‘We’ll get you nice and plump in no time.’
‘Dad! There you are.’
‘Laurie?’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Skinny.’
‘Skinny?’
‘She’s coming in.’
‘You’re taking her into the house?’ Laurence asked in surprise.
‘Sure. Why not?’
Laurence frowned. ‘I never had you down as a cat person.’
‘There’s a lot you don’t know about your father,’ Marcus said. ‘I used to have a cat growing up. Albert.’
‘Albert?’
‘Albert the cat. A big fat ginger tom.’
‘I didn’t know.’
Marcus kept walking and, a moment later, entered the house followed by Laurence. The two men walked to the north wing and Marcus put the cat down once they reached their shared kitchen. It was a modest-sized room, large enough to have a small table in the middle, but a little dated. It could really do with a makeover, but there were some nice features like the old range and the butler sink.
As soon as they were in the room, the cat sprang up onto the kitchen table.
‘Oh, Dad!’
‘Off there, Skinny,’ Marcus said, quickly picking the cat up and putting her onto the floor. ‘Now, where’s that tuna?’
‘You’re not thinking of adopting him, are you?’
‘Her, and I don’t see why not. It’ll be nice to have a companion around the place.’
‘Just in case you hadn’t noticed, I live in the next room,’ Laurence said, and there was something in his tone of voice that caught Marcus’s attention.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means that you can talk to me if you need a companion.’
‘I know that, son.’
‘Do you?’
Finding the tin of tuna, Marcus put it down and turned to face Laurence.
‘What’s got into you?’
‘What do you mean? Nothing’s got into me,’ Laurence said.
‘You’ve got that strange tone.’
‘No I haven’t.’
‘You sound narked.’
Marcus heard his son sigh. ‘Dad, I wanted to ask you something.’
‘I’ve told you, I’m not going to talk about your mother—’
‘No, not that,’ Laurence interrupted. ‘It’s about my business.’
Marcus op
ened the tin of tuna and tipped the contents onto a white saucer before placing it on the floor in front of Skinny.
‘There you go, little one.’
‘Dad!’
‘What is it?’
‘I’m trying to talk to you.’
‘Go on.’
‘I’ve got quite a lot of work on at the moment.’
‘So, what’s new?’
‘What’s new is that I’m my own boss now, or had you forgotten?’
Marcus turned to face his son. ‘How could I forget that? It’s why we moved here, isn’t it?’
‘Partly,’ Laurence said. ‘Anyway, it’s a lot of work and I’ve been thinking of hiring an assistant. Just part-time.’
‘Good idea.’
‘Any thoughts? I mean, can you think of anyone who might be interested?’
Marcus thought for a moment. Who did he know with a head for business who might be able to help his son?
‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘Is this your ham-fisted way of asking me to work for you?’
Laurence frowned. ‘Of course not! Although, now you come to mention it, that’s not a bad idea.’
Marcus shook his head. ‘Not interested.’ He searched the kitchen cupboards until he found a suitable bowl, which he filled with water and placed on the floor for the cat.
‘I could pay you,’ Laurence added.
‘I don’t need your money.’
‘I know, but wouldn’t it be great to have something to do?’
Marcus frowned. Had he heard his son right? ‘I’ve got plenty to do,’ he said.
‘What? What have you got to do, Dad?’
‘You want me to keep a diary so I can show you how my hours are filled?’
‘No, of course not!’
‘I don’t need this, Laurie. I don’t need you buzzing around me all the time.’
‘I’m not buzzing. I’m—’
‘I admire what you’re doing, setting up your own business from scratch, but that’s your dream. That’s what you want to do. You don’t need to include me in it. I can take care of myself.’
‘I know you can, Dad.’
‘Just let me be, will you?’ And he left the room with Skinny the cat – having finished her tuna meal – trotting behind him.
Laurence was pretty shaken after the confrontation in the kitchen. He had to accept some of the blame himself as he hadn’t handled things in the best way imaginable, but Marcus wasn’t the easiest man to deal with and Laurence found himself becoming increasingly frustrated by this. All he wanted to do was reach out to his father – he had thought that encouraging him to become part of the business was a really great way forward, but maybe he’d been wrong.
Love in an English Garden Page 12
