‘I really don’t think so, Ned,’ I assured him. ‘In fact, if you put out a collecting box asking for donations towards the restoration, people would put in loads of money. Most of them really will be interested in what you’re doing here.’
He brightened up. ‘I did wonder about having a “Become a Friend of the Grace Garden” page on the website, with an annual subscription that gives Friends unlimited free access. There could be newsletters and special events later.’
‘Great idea,’ I enthused. ‘You’ll probably get people volunteering to help in the garden, too.’
‘If their services are free, that would be really useful,’ he said.
Gert said she was going back to the greenhouse, but Ned could shout when he wanted her help spreading the liner in the pond, while Steve and James elected to unpack the stock and play with the sticky price labelling gun.
I returned to my beds of thorns, where there was no feline presence, not even a furry Cheshire Cat grin hanging in the air.
Once Ned had lined the pond, he couldn’t resist the lure of the rose garden either and, leaving Gertie starting to line up some pots of damp-loving plants ready to go into the top marshy area, he appeared with gauntlets and secateurs of his own, and started cutting back the blocked path from the pond end, working even faster than I was.
I had to dash off to check the River Walk, which was obviously going to regularly punctuate my afternoon activities, but I dashed straight back again and, by then he’d made such inroads that after only a few minutes we met in the middle.
‘Livingstone, I presume?’ he said.
‘Since I’m sweating cobs and filthy, I’m certainly no Sleeping Beauty,’ I said. ‘But I’m glad we’ve cleared all the way round.’
‘So am I, and I think that’s more than enough for one day,’ he said. ‘I’ll take all the tools back and clear up, if you want to get off.’
‘No, I’ll help you, because I want to borrow a pickaxe from the Potting Shed, if you don’t mind,’ I told him. ‘I need to take out two rosemary bushes with really deep roots and it’ll loosen them more easily.’
‘Do you know how to use a pickaxe?’
‘I certainly do!’
‘Help yourself, then,’ he said. So I did, choosing the smaller of the two … and then, suddenly, I remembered the quiz night and dashed off for a quick shower, and change of clothes.
As I trotted through the lavender garden, Caspar appeared from the bushes and ran after me, making complicated spluttering noises.
I was starting to suspect he might be Russian.
15
Back to Black
My chosen outfit for the evening was black jeans, black T-shirt, black sweatshirt and my best Doc Marten boots. The effect was lightened slightly by ruby lip gloss and the butterflies decorating the boots, which was just as well, because otherwise the patrons of the Devil’s Cauldron might have thought the Grim Reaper had popped in for a quick pint.
Elf was waiting for me in the café, in which one dim light burned behind the counter. Sounds of feline indignation sounded from the other side of the closed stable door to the cottage kitchen.
‘Myfy will be out in a minute,’ she said. ‘Caspar didn’t seem to like the new flavour of cat food and is demanding something else.’
‘Yes, I can hear him,’ I agreed with a grin.
Elf was also wearing black, though her tunic was alleviated by a large and chunky necklace of turquoise beads, which matched her hair, and her spike-heeled boots added about three inches to her height.
I admired her beads while she put on a silver quilted coat and she told me she’d bought the necklace in Mexico some years ago, when on holiday with her friend Gerald.
‘We always have our annual holiday together and like to go somewhere new each time. We wanted to see Machu Picchu, and we decided it would be much better to do it before we got any older, because of the altitude. We didn’t want to pop our clogs there, however spectacular it was.’
‘I suppose the same went for Everest?’ I joked, but she replied quite seriously.
‘Oh, that had no appeal – so many people queue all the way up the mountain when the weather’s good, and there are squalid camps and litter. I’m told it really isn’t a magical experience at all, now. But we might try Tibet,’ she added, as if it was a new kind of tea, possibly one with added yak milk and butter.
‘Where are you going this year?’
‘Just Iceland, because our big one next year will be an extensive tour of China, including the Great Wall and the Terracotta Army.’
Myfy slid through the stable door at this point, fending off Caspar’s attempt to follow her with her foot, and closed it.
‘Elf does more globetrotting than Michael Palin,’ she said, catching the last sentence.
‘I don’t think he does so much now,’ said Elf.
‘Aren’t you tempted to go, too?’ I asked Myfy.
‘No, I got the travel bug out of my system when I was fresh out of art college. Backpacked with friends, had a wonderful time and came back with a head full of ideas. I’d posted sketchbooks back every time I came to somewhere you could post anything from, too. But nothing was quite like Jericho’s End and the waterfalls.’
‘You picked Jacob up in Morocco,’ pointed out her sister, as if he was the ultimate souvenir.
‘I didn’t pick him up – we’d already met in London. It was more that we gravitated together and then, somehow, had difficulty with the idea of parting.’
‘You manage to part on almost a daily basis now,’ Elf said.
‘Having separate houses so near each other doesn’t count, and you need a little space to be truly creative,’ Myfy said serenely. ‘You and Gerald only live together when you’re on holiday.’
‘But we’re just best friends.’
‘Yeah, with perks,’ Myfy said rudely.
I expected Treena and I would still be engaging in this sort of sisterly bickering when we were in our sixties … and beyond.
Myfy was already cloaked and booted and we let ourselves out to the sound of celestial chiming.
The night was quite quiet, just the occasional vroom of a car in the lane, the faraway hoot of an early owl out hunting and the thunder of water under the bridge. Elf and Myfy were still gently arguing, though this time the subject seemed to be some weird kind of clock that had vanished from the dining room.
‘It hasn’t been stolen, Jacob’s simply borrowed it – he’s interested in the idea of a mechanism utilizing big metal ball bearings and gravity.’
‘That clock is very unusual and valuable,’ Elf pointed out. ‘He isn’t going to take it apart, is he?’
Myfy didn’t answer directly, but instead said, ‘It’ll be more valuable if it works, and Jacob will put it back together when he’s had a good look.’
‘Huh!’ said Elf.
‘Jacob’s very interested in ways of making kinetic sculptures that rely on natural forces, or by turning a handle – or any other method of ecologically sustainable movement,’ Myfy explained to me.
‘That sounds fascinating,’ I said, thinking I really must get round to looking up kinetic art.
‘I’ll take you up to the barn one of these days. There are several wind- or water-driven installations around it, as well as quite a lot of smaller pieces in the barn itself. In fact, it’s quite a job for anyone to get his works away from Jacob to exhibit or sell. He’d like to keep them all.’
‘I’d love to see them,’ I said.
We were over the bridge now and the pub on the other side of the road was brightly lit, several cars parked in the courtyard at the side, in front of the restaurant windows.
‘The Possets have a good thing going with the new restaurant and bar, even when it isn’t tourist season,’ Elf said. ‘But we go in through the old front door to the lounge with the other locals – it’s cosier.’
The large room was already well filled. It had a low ceiling and was furnished with long dark wooden t
ables and padded benches along the walls, with smaller ones scattered seemingly randomly in the central space. Another room must open off it at the back, for from somewhere in that direction came the sound of darts hitting a board and loud male voices.
Standing at the bar was a familiar tall and wide-shouldered figure, the top of his tawny head almost touching the thick dark beam above him.
Ned hadn’t said he’d be there, but on the other hand, I hadn’t asked. But I suppose even if he had been shunning the outside world, he’d be happy enough to socialize in this safe, familiar one, where everyone knew him and would judge him on what they knew, rather than what they read.
‘Hi,’ he said, turning and catching sight of us. ‘Gerald and Jacob are already here saving seats, and they’ve got your drinks in,’ he said to Elf and Myfy. ‘Let me get you one, Marnie – what would you like?’
‘I’ll get my own, thanks,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to get sucked into buying rounds for everyone. It would be a bit out of my budget.’
‘Oh, come on, Ellwood! I think I could buy you one drink, without you feeling a crushing sense of obligation to buy everyone else one later,’ he said, and Charlie, who was standing on the other side of the bar, grinned.
‘What’ll it be?’ he asked me.
‘A half of bitter shandy, please,’ I said, giving in.
‘They only have Gillyflower’s Best Bitter here and it’s sacrilege to put lemonade in that,’ objected Ned.
‘Well, that’s what I like,’ I said. ‘We used to drink Gillyflower’s at that pub near college, didn’t we?’
‘We did, but I don’t remember you adulterating it with lemonade back then.’
‘The customer is always right,’ Charlie said. ‘One bitter shandy coming up.’
‘We can order food in a minute, but it’s scampi or sausage and chips in a basket, so it doesn’t take long to decide what to eat.’
We carried our drinks over to one of the long tables in the darkest corner, where I was introduced to Gerald, who was a slightly Mr Pickwickian man, portly and rubicund, and with twinkling grey eyes behind round rimless glasses. He didn’t look like my idea of an intrepid world traveller … but then, now I came to think of it, neither did the birdlike Elf.
I slid onto the bench seat next to her and Ned sat on the chair opposite.
While I sipped my shandy, I looked around at the rapidly filling tables, spotting several people I knew, like Gertie and Steve, at a table with James, and several others who looked vaguely familiar.
Elf decided to point out some of the more notable locals: ‘That’s the Tollers over there, Stacy and Cal, who have the general shop. Their two eldest are in that group of young people near the bar … and then Charlie’s parents will be around somewhere, probably in the restaurant lounge at the moment. Charlie looks just like his dad, so you can’t miss him, but Katy’s really fair. Odd, because she’s the one distantly related to the Verdi family. There’s an older son, Harry, who is a chef, but he’s off working on a world cruise liner …’
‘Don’t baffle the poor girl with a list of who’s who and how we’re all related; just let her find out in her own good time,’ said Myfanwy.
‘But it’s all very interesting,’ protested Elf. ‘The original Victorian Verdis had about a dozen children and they married into the local families, like the Tollers and Possets. You get the dark Italian looks popping up all over the place. Myfy and I both have dark eyes, but Myfy had the lovely raven hair, too.’
‘It’s equally beautiful now,’ Jacob said. ‘Like a cascade of pearls.’ He and Myfy exchanged one of their intimate smiles.
‘My father was Italian, but my mother English,’ I said.
‘That accounts for your rather unusual and pretty combination of dark hair and warm complexion, with light blue-grey eyes,’ Gerald said kindly.
Food had been ordered and it did indeed arrive in retro plastic baskets, but was simple and good: chunky home-made chips and crispy scampi.
Gerald was eating sausages, which he told me were excellent and that the organic pork came from the pig farm at Cross Ways Farm.
‘That’s the Vanes’ farm, isn’t it?’ I said, even though I knew very well that it was.
‘That’s right. The Vanes turned to pig farming in a big way. Old Saul may be the most surly, ill-tempered man in the valley, but he certainly knows his pigs, and his eldest son, Samuel, is a chip off the old block.’
‘Wayne’s the oddball one,’ Elf said. ‘Didn’t want to work on the farm, doesn’t seem to want to do anything much to earn a living. Then there was that big family fuss when he got a Thorstane girl into trouble a few years ago and refused to marry her.’
‘At least that’s one local family you’re not related to,’ I said.
‘Oh, but actually there is an extremely distant link – not to us, but to Ned,’ Elf said, to my surprise. ‘It’s in my book. A Vane servant girl ran off with one of the Lordly-Grace sons, came back pregnant and somehow ended up married to Richard Grace, a widower who lived at the Hall. He adopted the boy and Ned is descended from that line.’
Ned made a face. ‘I’m more of a Lordly-Grace descendant then, though it was such a very long time ago, I think we can forget all about it.’
I fell silent, thinking this revelation over, because … well, I must be extremely distantly related both to the Lordly-Graces and Ned, through my Vane ancestry!
I’d have to read the story in the book and find out more.
I’d finished my food and someone had put another drink in front of me, without asking. My tired muscles were relaxing in the warmth and I felt a bit sleepy, despite the hubbub.
A last group of people came in. I recognized the owner of the gift shop and Ned said one of the others was from Brow Farm on the hill behind Risings.
Then Ned looked at his watch and said the quiz would start any minute.
‘And here’s Cress,’ said Elf, as a tall, lanky girl in waxed jacket, riding breeches and paddock boots came in and stood looking vaguely round. She had the face of a not unattractive, but slightly worried, bloodhound, and her mouse-brown hair was in a long plait that hung over one shoulder like an unravelling bell rope.
Gerald stood up, waved and beckoned, and her expression brightened as she waved back. She got herself a drink and then made her way over and took the last seat, on the end of the bench next to me and directly opposite Ned. In fact, her surprisingly lovely big grey eyes were fixed on him with a sort of doglike devotion.
‘Hi, Cress,’ he said, casually. ‘This is Marnie Ellwood, the new gardener I’m sharing with Elf and Myfy. Marnie, meet Cressida Lordly-Grace from Risings, allegedly our remote relative by the backstairs.’
Cress looked faintly surprised and he added, ‘We’ve just been talking about the ancient family scandal. Elf’s put it in her book.’
‘Oh, right,’ Cress said vaguely. ‘I knew the family had a big bust-up over it with the Grace cousins at the Hall in the early nineteenth century.’
‘Yes, that’s why the two families ignored each other until recently,’ Myfy said.
‘But it’s so silly to carry on with that sort of thing,’ said Cress. ‘We’re all friends now.’
‘Audrey, Cress’s mother, doesn’t exactly mix with the rest of us peasants,’ Ned said, when she’d gone to the bar to get crisps, which seemed to be all the dinner she intended eating.
‘No, Audrey’s always been snobby,’ Myfy agreed, then explained to me, ‘Her late father-in-law left the property to Cress, but Audrey carries on as if she owns it.’
‘The old man left the lodge to Steve just to spite her,’ Elf said. ‘The only reason he let her carry on living there after his son died was because he loved Cress.’
‘There wasn’t much money, though, so that’s why they’re having to run Risings as a B&B,’ Ned explained.
‘Or Cress is. Audrey still has her pretensions,’ Elf said. ‘Cress and some daily help run the B&B, but her main passion is horses and she does some
teaching at a riding school over near Great Mumming, when she can get away.’
‘She keeps two horses at Brow Farm, too,’ Jacob said. ‘I like the piebald with the wall eye best.’
‘Only because he looks so odd,’ Myfy said. ‘He has a pink floppy lower lip, too, and grins a lot.’
‘Can horses grin?’ asked Gerald.
‘Rags does,’ she said.
‘Cress would get on well with my sister, Treena,’ I said. ‘Her horse is at livery near Great Mumming and she spends all the time she can spare with her.’
‘They might already have met, because it could be the same stables.’
‘Maybe,’ I said, as Cress returned with four packets of crisps and a bag of peanuts. Her horses would probably be able to use her as a salt lick by the end of the evening.
‘Gerald teaches music at Gobelins, a small private school,’ Elf said.
‘I’m sort of semi-retired, so a few hours here and there suit me very well,’ he told me.
Charlie and a young girl so like him she must be his sister, Daisy, brought round pads of paper and pens for each table and there was a bit of moving chairs about and regrouping in the room, which was now crowded. Through a gap at the far end of the bar I could glimpse the new lounge and the restaurant, and that looked busy, too. For a pub up a dead-end lane off a minor road, it was surprising how popular the place was!
But on this side, everyone seemed to be local and when we’d sorted ourselves out a bit, the quiz began.
The questions were read out by an elderly man, who I was told was Frank Toller, Charlie’s grandfather, and were very wide-ranging.
I’d only done gardening quizzes before, and that was when I was a student, but we seemed to have a wide range of general knowledge on our table, apart from TV soaps. Between them, Gerald and Jacob answered the music questions, from pop and rock to classical, and Ned proved to be hot on history and general knowledge. My input was confined to nature and an obscure question on Agatha Christie.
Ned looked at me with a raised eyebrow and I whispered: ‘Cosy crime fan.’
In any small intervals of silence, the tock, tock of darts hitting a board came from the out-of-sight area at the back and occasionally the players would emerge to order in another round of drinks. One of them was Wayne Vane, I saw. He didn’t look around, though, just shambled up to the bar and then straight back again.
The Garden of Forgotten Wishes: The heartwarming and uplifting new rom-com from the Sunday Times bestseller Page 16
