“Oh, I’ve missed that scent. Viola odorata, it always makes me think that spring is just around the corner. But it’s too early for these yet ...Where on earth did you get them from at this time of year?”
“They were a gift.” Hamish replied, not wanting to reveal his thoughts about the giver but equally not wanting to lie to Sara.
“I expect they must have come from a florist,” she mused. He doubted that but didn’t say so. “Someone must like you a lot. It’s expensive to buy things like this when they are out of season.” Satisfied with her own explanation, Sara sat the flowers back. “You know, I sell some flowers through the nursery shop if you’re ever looking for gifts.”
“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind. Speaking of sales ...What do I owe you for the swans?”
“Oh, nothing. Their former owners are so pleased to be rid of them they even said that they’d be happy to keep supplying you with feed for the pair. There had been threats from the neighbours of ‘roast swan’ if something wasn’t done about them. You’d be amazed how much mess those two can create when they put their minds to it. And like I said, the village children were terrified of Attila, so it’s a sort of a service to the local public as well.”
“I’m loving them more and more. Not.” Hamish grimaced. “If this is marketing them to me, I wouldn’t give up your day job.” He said, shaking his head.
“You wouldn’t back out on me, would you?” She looked a little concerned at the prospect.
“No,” he sighed. “I’m sure they’ll settle just fine. This house seems to attract unhappy waifs and outcasts so they should fit right in.”
“Unhappy waifs and outcasts?” she mused. “That’s an interesting combination. Mind you, that would have described Matthew and me when we came back to the village, so maybe it’s not just White Briars that attracts them.”
“And which were you, a waif or an outcast?” Hamish asked, curious. Then, “No, I’m sorry, I have no right to ask that ...especially as I was insisting on my own right to privacy earlier ...don’t feel you have to answer.”
“No, its fine,” Sara replied. “I don’t have a problem with telling you and my story is pretty well known round these parts. You’ll find out, if you stay for any length of time, that most people in the village will know more about you than you probably know yourself ....Um, Matthew, why don’t you take another biscuit and go into the living room? I’m sure Hamish won’t mind if you have a look around.” Then, as an afterthought, “Don’t touch anything.”
“He’ll be fine,” Hamish said. “You can turn the TV or the Xbox on if you like, Matthew, and I’ll give you the upstairs tour when we’ve finished our drinks. There’s a room right up the top that I’m sure you’d love to see. It has secret stairs and all.”
“Cool.” Matthew said. “Anyway, I can tell when mum wants to have a ‘not-for-my-ears’ talk with someone. I’ll go. You won’t be long will you?”
“Get away with ya.” his mother said, giving him a friendly push. “You’re too clever by half for me.” Matthew went through the door. His mother got up and closed it behind him.
She turned to Hamish. “I might as well tell you...before you hear it from someone else. It’s not that spectacular. To keep a long story short, here’s the truncated version.” She took a deep breath before launching into a hurried explanation … “My mum died when I was born and I was always a bit of a rebel, hated school, discipline and all that stuff. I ran away from home to London when I was in my teens and I lived rough and hard on the streets, begging mostly for a living. I ended up with a selection of badly drawn tattoos, a drinking problem, and pregnant with Matthew. So I came back home with my tail between my legs when I was seventeen and six months into the pregnancy. The thought of becoming a mother on the streets was just too much for me. At least I never did drugs, and I went cold turkey on the drinking the minute I found out I was pregnant … it wasn’t easy, and coming back wasn’t exactly a picnic, but I had incentive. Apart from Matthew, it’s nothing I’m proud of, but it’s my, and to some extent his, history so these days I tend to acknowledge it and get on with my life. People here take me as they find me ...I don’t pretend, and I don’t wallow in it.”
“I just see someone who has made a good life for herself and her son,” observed Hamish, thoughtfully. “We all have stories to tell, don’t we? It’s just that some people, like you, are more honest with theirs than others. I’ll tell you mine sometime, but not just yet.” he took a sip of his drink. “Your dad said you’d studied Horticulture and had taken over the family business. That must have been a challenge with a small child.”
“You’re dead right it was. There was just my dad and me. He helped by babysitting some, but I still had to do most of it myself. He’s of the ‘you make your bed, you lie on it’ school, so I didn’t get too much sympathy, or sleep, not in those early days, anyway. I took on the business after dad retired. It’s doing O.K., we’re not in any danger of becoming millionaires yet, but I’ve made some changes in the way I run it and it’s ticking over nicely.”
“I’m going to need plants here sometime soon. A lot of the old shrubs close to the house have grown too big and leggy to prune and I think they’d be better to be replaced with new stock. I’d appreciate some advice if you could spare the time to have a look around, before the spring sets in.”
“I’d love to. With a garden this size, I can see you’re going to be good for business,” Sara rubbed her hands in glee. She turned her head towards the kitchen door, listening, “I don’t want to change the subject, but perhaps I’d better check on what my beautiful boy is up to. I haven’t heard any noise from in there, and that’s never a good sign.”
“I’m sure he’s fine, but it’s probably time we went and showed him the tower anyway. I hope you’ve got a good head for heights.”
“Lead on,” Sara said, waving her arm in a gesture that indicated that Hamish should go first.
Acting as tour guide, Hamish showed Sara and Matthew through the rest of the house finishing with the tower. Both mother and son scrambled nimbly up the ladder as if born to it. From the chilly heights of the widow’s walk they could see the swans as specks, still contentedly feeding in the pool. Matthew and Sara were preoccupied with trying, unsuccessfully, to spot their own house beyond the covered bridge when Hamish spied a thin spiral of smoke drifting barely above the trees in the cold mid-morning air of the woods to the south-east of the house. Having a private theory as to whom might be responsible for the plume he noted the location, but, not wanting to draw the others attention, said nothing. They descended the tower, Matthew having extracted a promise from Hamish to show him how to use the telescope on the next available clear night. Sara and Matthew left shortly after and Hamish lost no time putting his outdoor clothes back on and heading towards the source of the smoke.
He took the path that led through the woods to the white stone bridge, promising himself that clearing this overgrown track would be his next major undertaking, before striking out through the trees in the general direction of the smoke. There was little chance of him losing his way back as his trail was clearly marked by his own footprints in the snow, though it took some time before he found the cause of the smoke as the stream had taken a big loop to the east, making him go some distance out of his way. He knew he was close when he smelled wood-smoke but by the time he got there the fire was nothing more than a few fizzling embers. Someone must have thrown water over the hot ashes even as he approached. Instead of smoke; steam was now rising from where the fire had been burning only moments before. He looked around; the fire had been built at the edge of a small clearing in the woods, close to a rocky bank that rose to three times his own height. He went up to the bank for a closer look, ...to find when he checked around the back of a large boulder that the bank was cleft,...he stuck his head into a narrow opening that widened to a small, dry cave of sorts. The area was barely big enough for a tall person like himself, but someone smaller, and very thin, he thoug
ht, might just fit in there. He was disappointed to see no evidence of occupation and backed out slowly, still managing to bang his head on an overhanging outcrop. He stood, ruefully rubbing the sore spot, while peering out into the woods. Trees, some stark and leafless others still green with needles surrounded the clearing, making it very hard to see any distance. She was out there, though, he could feel it...
“I won’t hurt you, I only want to help,” he shouted to the trees. No reply. He tried again. “Please come back to the house, you can’t stay warm out here, you might die.” Still nothing, except a tiny echo, bouncing from tree to tree, “might die…, might die…, might die...,” it faded away, until he was sure he’d just imagined the sound. There was no point staying, she could be anywhere in the trees and he wouldn’t see her, that, he knew at some level of pure gut instinct.
Frustrated, he turned on his heel and followed his trail of footprints back to the bridge and the house, to spend the rest of the day fretting about her, out there, alone, in the cold. His night was restless and he was glad to see the dawn, he would attend the Sunday service and hope that he and David could find some information among the church records that might help.
***
Jack’s green eyes darkened with interest. He shadowed the man back to the bridge, all the while mulling over this latest revelation. So, she was cold, was she? And she might die if she stayed out in the woods? This was news to him.
He gave a short barking laugh. A pair of foxes appeared out of the trees ranging either side of him as he went in search of Liana himself.
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet
William Shakespeare
Chapter Twelve
Sunday morning, Hamish found the drinking chocolate, the marshmallows, the remaining chocolate biscuits and his last container of milk from the fridge had disappeared overnight from the kitchen. Sitting on the bench top was a large, beautifully wrought wreath of ivy and fir, with dozens of Helleborus niger or Christmas roses woven into the ring. Tiny red apples peeped out here and there brightly contrasting amongst the profusion of white flowers. He turned the heavy wreath over in his hands, trying to see how the whole had been put together, but it was impossible to see any how anything was interconnected without pulling it apart. There was even a stoutly fashioned ring woven at the back for hanging it.
As he ate breakfast and drank black coffee, he mused. The borrowing of these latest items made him wonder if she had been watching through one of the kitchen windows the day before. Well, he thought, she wouldn’t get far with the hot chocolate unless she had a pot to heat the milk in. He took an old pot from the cupboard that wouldn’t be missed and put it outside the front door before hanging the wreath on the door. The day had dawned clear and bright and with the snow still lying about the doorway now looked like something he’d expect to see on a Hallmark Christmas card. He was tempted to take his camera on the walk to church again today but aware that he’d need to shop for groceries later in the day he drove his car around the paved roadway to church instead.
Mercifully for Hamish, the church service was short. He was impatient to start looking through the parish records and hoped David wouldn’t have to hang about after the service for too long chatting to parishioners. He stood waiting outside, huffing on his frozen fingers, until David had said goodbye to the last of the stragglers. As the last group wandered along the cleared church path to the lych-gate David turned to him, “You’re in luck, normally its tea, coffee and half an hour of parish chit-chat over in the vicarage after church, but so many people are still away today or have their families staying over the long weekend that we decided not to bother. I’m, pretty sure that the records we want are stored over at the vicarage, so let’s go and have a hot drink and we can get started.”
They spent the next two hours sifting through a small mountain of documents, loose papers and registers that had been collected by generations of parishioners and vicars over several centuries. The search revealed much that was interesting but nothing relevant to Hamish’s theory, until David, looking for the second time through the parish wedding register for the years 1940-45 found a single loose page tucked between the blank end papers of the book. There were several entries on the page, written in scrawling India ink, but it was the last that had caught his eye. “I say, look at this,” he said in excited tones that immediately captured Hamish’s full attention. “Jonathan Patrick Kendal, artist, of White Briars married Virginia. Odd, isn’t it? She has no last name. It’s dated July 5th, 1944. Kendal, that’s the name, isn’t it of the man you said was the last occupant of White Briars before yourself? I thought you said they hadn’t married?”
“That’s what Arthur told me,” Hamish said. “But he was just passing on unsubstantiated hearsay that was little more than village gossip from when he was young. Perhaps they were married secretly and no one else knew?”
“That’s possible,” David acknowledged. “The war years saw a lot of weddings spawned by the imminent departure of loved ones to the front.” He held the page up, inspecting it more closely, as he mused. “I wonder why this page is loose. It’s a different paper than the rest of the register. It looks a lot older and it’s been torn down one side as if it’s been ripped out of something.” As he was speaking he scanned the other entries, there was silence for a moment, then, as understanding set in, “Oh my goodness, you might want to see this.” Wordlessly, he handed the yellowed paper over to Hamish. Hamish ran his eye quickly over the page. There were eight marriages recorded, each in a different hand. At first the significance of these eluded him and it took him several readings to fully comprehend what the vicar had seen.
Realisation sank in. “Whew, I get what you mean,” he whistled. “Jackpot.” He looked over at David. “Do you think they could all be her?” David shrugged noncommittally, as if to say his jury was still undecided. “Look,” Hamish said wonderingly. “... These entries start from 1498 and she’s changed her name each time, just enough, presumably, to allay suspicion. I suppose people round here could have long memories for someone like her but she hasn’t tried terribly hard, has she?” He read out the brides’ names, “Leigh Ann, Ivy, Julianne, Bryony, Rose, Briar, Jasmine, and, of course, Virginia, they’re almost exclusively floral names, and all with no last name. Let’s see,” he thought aloud, “...Ivy, Bryony, Jasmine, all clinging vines; and Julianne, isn’t ‘liane’ the French word for a vine or a climber?”
David nodded his agreement, adding, “And that would explain Leigh Ann, just another variation …so they are all floral.”
“So, five climbers, Rosa and Briar ...” Hamish pondered for a moment. “Hmmm, ...that’s a bit odd, ... no its not, ... rambling roses are climbers of sorts, ...and Arthur said the house used to be swathed in white rambling roses, ...and,” the picture of the house he had seen, shrouded in vine and lit by the morning sun leapt into his mind, “...and now its covered in Virginia creeper.”
“Virginia!” they said together.
“And look,’ Hamish waved the page in front of David, pointing to an entry, “Briar married James Earle in February, 1839. The house as it is dates from 1841, I know that much, and its name, White Briars, you must start to see a connection here?”
“Could be,” David said cautiously, “or, to paraphrase a quote I believe I once read by Pierre Tailhard de Chardin, you could be trying too hard to make these few facts fit your hypothesis. Not that I want to rain on your parade, Hamish, but you do realise what you are saying, don’t you? You’re blithely suggesting that this, this,...” he waved his hand in the air, lost for words, “... being, …has been living in the parish and has married eight times in this church since,..” he leaned over to reread the first date written on the page, “…since April, 1498.” After a moment’s calculation, “so that would make her age somewhere in the region of five hundred, plus, years old?”
“Um. Yes. That would be pretty much it. In a nutshell.” agr
eed Hamish, wincing somewhat in embarrassment but not yet ready to back down. He fully expected David to pooh-pooh his hypothesis, which made David’s next words all the more surprising.
“Then may I suggest that we keep this just between ourselves for the moment, until we can either prove it more conclusively or disprove it. If that’s alright with you?” David exhaled explosively.
“I’m not exactly planning on shouting it from the rooftops,” Hamish said, relieved that someone would at least entertain the idea that there might be a kernel of truth in the idea.
“Good. I can check through the register for any Christenings in case there were children from any of these unions but for the present I’ve thought of one other little thing that we can do right now to check the provenance of this page.” David pulled a pair of white gloves out of a drawer and opened a cupboard in the corner of the room. He opened one of a series of wide flat drawers that, he explained to Hamish, contained the older parish registers. “Here’s the one I’m looking for,” he said, picking up a leather-bound book. He carefully placed it on the cloth-covered table next to the page they had found. “This is the marriage register that should cover the period around that first date.” saying this, he started to turn the pages until he found what he was hoping for. “See,” he held the torn page next to a ragged edge on the inside of the thick bound pages, “it fits. ...If this woman was not,...” he chose his next words carefully, “of the same realm as say, you or I, ...I could understand why someone might have chosen to remove or perhaps need to hide, at some stage, the evidence of one or more of these marriages. There have, after all, been some very troubled times in the life of the church. Honestly, if any of this is true, I’m quite amazed that it was recorded at all.”
Flowers in the Morning Page 21
