‘So it transpired, but it’s surprising how many people want to believe horrible things, isn’t it? Mud does seem to stick, too, and the TV company hung fire on commissioning the next series of This Small Plot. Poor Ned just suddenly felt he’d had enough of people looking at him strangely and thinking the worst. He was totally disillusioned, not to mention having had enough of living near London and all the travelling about, so he came back here. It’s been his home base for years anyway, since his parents were killed in a car crash and it did mean that he was there for Theo in his last weeks. They were very close.’
‘I would have thought the programme was so popular that, once the truth was out, they’d try to persuade Ned to go back.’
‘They might have done, but he doesn’t want to resume his old life. It was all such a shock to him that people could believe in all those lies. Now he’s inherited Old Grace Hall, he intends to make his life here, restoring the apothecary garden and opening it to the public. He still takes occasional garden design commissions. He likes the challenge of small ones, like in the TV programmes, and it’s amazing what he can do with them.’
‘He was always brilliant at garden design,’ I agreed, as we carried on up the path, turning over what I’d been told in my head. Ned had always been surprisingly sensitive under that rugged exterior and it didn’t really surprise me that he’d retired here to lick his wounds … and then decided to stay for ever. Who, on inheriting such a magical garden, wouldn’t have?
‘I understand now where he’s coming from,’ I said. ‘No doubt he’s heard about a resignation letter to HHT, purportedly written by me, and he thinks I might be emotionally unstable and cause more trouble and possibly scandal for him?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. His recent experience has naturally made him overcautious.’
Welcome to the club, I thought, slightly bitterly.
‘Well, he needn’t have any concerns because I didn’t actually write that resignation letter,’ I told her, wondering how much to explain and deciding on as little as possible. ‘I had a jealous and controlling husband when I was working for the Heritage Homes Trust and while I was off work, ill, he sent the resignation from my email account, and then he emailed them as himself, telling them I’d had a nervous breakdown and not to worry about anything I’d said in the letter.’
‘I … see,’ Myfy said, and I knew she realized there were great chunks of this story I was editing out, but didn’t probe.
‘By the time I was well enough to pick up my emails and find their acceptance of my resignation, the damage had been done. They didn’t believe me when I tried to explain.’
‘And that’s when you went to France?’
‘Yes, and then divorced my husband as soon as he agreed to it.’
‘He doesn’t sound a great loss,’ Myfy said drily. ‘But with that experience behind you, you’ll understand how Ned is feeling.’
‘I do, but he must understand that all I want now is to settle into a gardening job and a quiet life, doing what I love best. I’ll work hard, take orders and enjoy helping to restore the gardens … if I’m allowed.’
‘Fair enough,’ she said. ‘I think I’m a good judge of character and I believe you. Your job with us at Lavender Cottage is secure – and perhaps, if I have a little word with Ned …?’
‘I think it might be better if I do that,’ I said. ‘I hope he believes me and gives me a chance, otherwise this wonderful opportunity will be only half a job.’
‘I’m sure he will,’ Myfy assured me. ‘He’s still that same kind, generous and outgoing person underneath, he’s just warier these days.’
‘Aren’t we all,’ I said, thinking that the past was a burden you might think you’d put down and left behind but, like Terry Pratchett’s Luggage, it kept jumping up and running after you.
The path had been growing steadily narrower and steeper as the valley closed in and we now had to pick our way round outcrops of rock and clumps of gorse.
To our right, the drystone wall that seemed to hold back the steep and wooded hillside had drawn closer.
‘I have no idea when, or how, they built the old walls that enclose our bit of land along the river,’ Myfy said, pausing to unhook a fold of her coat from a snatching branch of gorse. ‘But perhaps there weren’t the trees there before and it was sheep grazing.’
‘You do see walls on steep, rocky mountainsides that make you wonder the same thing,’ I agreed.
The valley now felt more like a ravine and the water, constrained in a deep channel, louder.
We had already crossed two small iron bridges over difficult areas and now the path took us onto a metal walkway that actually projected from a stone outcrop over the water, which felt perilous …
‘Iron. Victorian, like the turnstiles and bridges – they made these things to last, so long as you look after them, of course,’ Myfy called back over her shoulder. The bright tassels on her hood and the back of her coat swung out as she turned a corner and I followed, to find myself standing on a viewing platform below a thundering cascade of water that seemed to spring directly out of the rock face high above us.
‘The Fairy Falls,’ Myfy said, with a somewhat ironic inflection and we stood at the edge, looking up, the dark trees crowding down close on either side of the river and shutting out much of the light, so that it seemed a very mysterious and dark spot.
Spray dampened my face and my head was filled with the rushing of water, which sounded like beating wings …
7
Flights of Fancy
Eventually I pulled myself together and found Myfy looking at me in amusement. ‘There’s something about waterfalls that draws in and mesmerizes us all,’ she said. ‘This one has more legends around it than most, though. Some of it’s on the information board over there.’
I went over to look at the brightly painted board, which had a map of the falls with bubbles here and there, containing nuggets of old legends and information. There were also little ambiguous winged creatures near the top of the waterfall, which I thought were probably Myfy’s work.
Myfy, who’d followed me over, confirmed this. ‘I did the artwork and Elf wrote the info. She’s extremely interested in old legends and folk history and has had lots of articles published.’
She named a few esoteric-sounding magazines I’d never heard of and then added, ‘She’s written a book about the history of Jericho’s End, too, which was published recently.’
‘That sounds interesting,’ I said, thinking I’d google it later … among other things. I hoped Aunt Em’s ancient laptop was going to be up to that evening’s research.
‘Right, on we go,’ Myfy said briskly. ‘From here, the path is unmade and much more difficult, since it’s quite a climb, too. Although the sign warns visitors, they still attempt it wearing silly footwear. Elf’s forever treating people for sprained ankles and cuts and bruises – she did a first-aid course, but as far as I’m concerned, if they’re daft enough to go up there wearing flipflops or stiletto heels, they can deal with the consequences themselves.’
By now, I’d realized that Myfy, despite her long, dreamy and melancholy face, was a much tougher cookie than she had appeared at first glance.
‘I suppose most people now have a mobile phone and can ring for help,’ I suggested.
‘Not right up here they can’t, with the trees and the sides of the valley closing in like cliffs. You have to get much further down towards the turnstile before you can get any kind of signal.’
Myfy headed up the steep track like a mountain goat, but I followed more slowly, picking my way between huge rounded boulders and jagged, mossy rock outcrops. The waterfall thundered down on our left and we were close enough to feel the spray blown in our faces and the roaring in our ears. The valley was now little more than a cleft in the rocks, the branches of the trees interlacing high overhead.
Only shafts of light filtered through, mysteriously illuminating what felt oddly like an ancient and magical land
scape. I had a feeling that something awaited me around every bend …
A final scramble up a series of rocky outcrops brought us out onto a wide ledge, bordered by an iron rail, next to the point where the river gushed from the rocks.
We were so much higher now and there were stunted trees – oak and ash and hawthorn – springing from impossible crevices. Some kind of ferny plant framed the mouth of the river, like a deep green moustache.
One beam of light illuminated a rainbow dancing above the falls … and then I caught a fluttering movement out of the corner of my eye, though when I turned there was nothing there … except a faint sound of melodic voices and laughter, half heard and then suddenly turned off, like a radio.
I found Myfy looking at me strangely. ‘You can feel it, too, can’t you? Not everyone can and most of those who do are children. But there’s old magic here.’
‘Hence the name Fairy Falls, though you did say at lunch that some people thought they were angels rather than fairies.’
Like Mum, I thought; she certainly had.
‘The old name was the Angel Falls,’ Myfy said. ‘The Victorians renamed it when Jericho’s End became a renowned beauty spot – they seemed totally soppy about fairies. Then, of course, there was all that Cottingley Fairy business later on, between the wars. Do you know about that?’
‘You mean those two young girls who fooled everyone with their fairy photographs? I’ve seen a film about it. They even got Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to believe the photographs were real, didn’t they?’
‘Silly man,’ she observed. ‘But then, we so often see what we most want to, don’t we?’
‘True.’
‘Anyway, it rather debased the whole idea of fairies, except as some twee legend to attract tourists, and no one living in Jericho’s End wants to publicize what’s really here …’
She paused, her long, melancholy face going dreamy again, literally away with the fairies – or, more likely, the angels.
‘The legends about fairies living in the valley do pre-date the sixteenth century, when a local child swore she’d seen an angel by the falls, just like the one in the window in St Gabriel’s, the old church on the edge of Thorstane. The window is a very early one, well worth seeing,’ she added.
‘I’d love to go to look,’ I said. ‘Is that when the falls became known locally as the Angel Falls?’
‘That’s right. You can find it on very old maps. The child’s story was widely believed. At one time, there used to be an annual procession up here to bless the valley, but Elf thinks that might just have been a new spin on some kind of annual pagan fertility rite that has since died out.’
‘It’s all very fascinating,’ I said. ‘I did feel for a moment there was something other-worldly up here … very odd.’
‘As children, we were often aware of a winged presence, or heard something, when we came up here, but whatever they are, I’ve come to believe that angels and fairies are one and the same thing. So did Mum – she saw them when she was a little girl, too.’
‘So most of the actual sightings have been by children?’
‘That’s right, though some continue to see them when they grow up. There’s an early Victorian story about a teenage girl who came up here with friends and vanished entirely, a bit like Picnic at Hanging Rock. But Elf never found any evidence for that, so she left it out of the book.’
‘Do you still see them – whatever they are?’ I asked curiously.
‘I know they’re here,’ she said ambiguously. ‘They inspired my paintings and I think they’re why the valley is such a healing place.’
‘What was the café-gallery called, before it was Ice Cream and Angels?’
‘Just Verdi’s. Joseph and Maria Verdi moved here from London in the late nineteenth century and began selling ice-cream and water ices. Mum was Gina Verdi, the last of this branch of the family.’
I took a last, long look round.
It wasn’t eerie, or threatening, it just felt as if there was another dimension close by, through the thinnest of invisible walls. Perhaps you needed the eyes of a child to see through that.
Mum had told me she’d once seen what she’d described as a cloud of small, glowing angels … I’d love to see those. Suddenly I really wanted to tell Myfy about Mum, but firmly quashed the impulse: it wouldn’t be a good idea to reveal the Vane connection when the family were so obviously disliked. Besides, I’d already had to divulge something from my past I’d rather have kept to myself, so this new life wasn’t proving to be quite the clean slate I’d hoped it would be.
‘Right, now we go up again,’ Myfy announced, heading away from the falls and up a rough-hewn flight of steps, which had another of the iron handrails, set into the rock and heavily painted against the damp air.
Eventually, we emerged onto a flattish area above the falls, with patches of bare rock showing through wiry grass. A drystone wall stopped the curious from plummeting over the edge, though it was more probably put there to protect sheep.
The path ended at a small turnstile set into a more substantial and taller wall and through it was a narrow, rutted farm track.
‘Isn’t this another Victorian turnstile, like the ones at the entrance? Did the early visitors come all the way up here?’
‘Quite a lot of them did, including many women – the long skirts didn’t seem to hinder them when they really wanted to do something. We won’t go through the turnstile now, because it’s one way only and we’d have to walk back down the road through the village. The track joins it near a small terrace of cottages called, appropriately, Angel Row.’
‘When I arrived in the café this morning there were some hikers who I think Charlie said were coming up this way and then on to Thorstane,’ I remembered. It was starting to feel like a very long time since I’d arrived!
‘Probably. They can pick up the back road to Thorstane just beyond Angel Row. Not that it’s much of a road, once you get out of the village,’ she added.
‘It did look tricky on the Ordnance Survey map. Zigzag and very steep.’
‘It is: hairpin bends, with deep ditches on one side and a drop on the other. It’s mainly used by farm and forestry vehicles – and hikers. It’s the shortest way to walk from Jericho’s End to Thorstane, if you have the stamina for it and it brings you out by St Gabriel’s, which is really our village church.’
‘Has there never been a church in Jericho’s End itself?’
‘I suppose the monks who tried to settle in the valley had some kind of chapel, but they moved on after only a couple of years. So no, not unless you count the Brethren, a strict religious sect who sometimes used to hold meetings in the Red Barn at Cross Ways Farm. They’ve now died out with the last generation, which is hardly surprising, since they seemed to combine a sort of Amish lack of comfort with a belief that salvation could only be gained by the extreme oppression of women.’
‘That doesn’t sound much fun,’ I said, though it did sound like the kind of family Mum came from.
‘The Strange Brethren, they called themselves, and the Vane family from Cross Ways Farm were in the thick of it, hellfire and brimstone, women the original sinners and the cause of every evil,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘That kind of sect.’
The Vane family were sounding ever more unattractive and I felt no desire now to confess I was related to them. Wayne had hardly seemed a sterling modern-day example, either.
‘The St Gabriel’s parishioners, unless they were from the top end of the village, tended to take the footpath that starts near the gates of Risings and skirts the edge of Brow Farm. Bier Way, it’s called.’
‘Beer way?’ I echoed, puzzled. ‘It goes to a pub?’
She gave her tilted smile. ‘No, bier.’ She spelled it out. ‘It’s because coffins were often carried up it to the church.’
‘Cheery.’
She considered this. ‘Perhaps not in winter, but in spring and summer, I think taking your last journey through the fields and mead
ows, carried by your friends and family, doesn’t sound too bad.’
‘No, you’re right,’ I agreed.
We retraced our steps down the path by the waterfall, catching glimpses of the viewing platform below as the path twisted and turned, so I could see why that poor tourist had found herself stuck here overnight.
All the same, I longed to come back there alone, with no possibility of anyone else about. When I asked Myfy, it seemed that I was welcome to walk there in my free time whenever I wished.
‘I’m very glad you’re going to be doing the check on the walk every day, too,’ she added. ‘I quite often forget the time and then it doesn’t get done, unless Charlie or his sister, Daisy, are about.’
‘The café seems to have a lot of staff,’ I commented.
‘Not really, it’s usually just Elf. Charlie’s been helping out a lot, because of being on his gap year, and Daisy is still at school and only works in the café on Saturdays and in the holidays when they’re busy.’
We met no one at all on the way back and we’d picked up little litter, other than the inevitable plastic water bottles and one crisp packet that had obviously been blowing about the village for a few days before capture.
Locking the gate to Lavender Cottage carefully behind her, Myfy said, ‘The recycling bins are near the back door, if there’s anything that can go in them, but I’ll sort that today. Tomorrow, of course, is Tuesday, when the café’s closed, so you can spend your first day off settling in and then start work officially on Wednesday morning.’
‘Yes … but I’d better tackle Ned first thing tomorrow, before I do anything else,’ I said grimly.
‘I suppose you had better,’ she agreed. ‘He’s usually in his office in the courtyard at the top end of the Grace Garden from about eight thirty, unless he’s gardening. I’m sure everything will be all right, though, Marnie. He’s desperate for help to restore the garden, and he’s trying to renovate the Old Hall too, when he has any time. Poor Theo didn’t have a lot of money and an old period place like that drains your resources alarmingly, even if it isn’t very big.’
The Garden of Forgotten Wishes: The heartwarming and uplifting new rom-com from the Sunday Times bestseller Page 7
