The Rose Garden

by Susanna Kearsley

  ‘Shut up.’ Their banter had the easy back and forth that came with practice. ‘Shouldn’t you be getting back to work?’

  ‘I’ve got five minutes still. And I was hoping to take one of you big strong men back to the shop with me. I’ve just had an artist ship over her paintings – they’re huge, and I’ll need help to hang them.’

  Oliver was unenthusiastic. ‘Mark’s got bigger muscles. And while you’re off doing that,’ he said, ‘I’ll show the book to Eva.’

  Which was clearly what Felicity had wanted to begin with.

  I watched them go. ‘She’s fun.’

  ‘She is that.’ His gaze moved to me as he said, ‘That was nicely manoeuvred.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘Your inviting Fee out to have lunch with us. And with Mark. You’ve noticed she’s head over heels for him.’

  The fact that he’d noticed surprised me at first, till I realised he worked with Felicity and they were obviously close. ‘Yes, well,’ I told him, ‘I didn’t do all the manoeuvring, did I?’

  He grinned. ‘I’ve done my share of helping hang pictures. And Mark’s muscles really are bigger. Besides, how do you know I wasn’t manoeuvring for my own benefit?’

  I ate my last chip and wadded the paper with careful hands. ‘Oliver …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I do like you.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘I just don’t want you to think that I’m … that is, I’m really not looking for …’

  ‘Hey.’ I could hear the faint smile in his voice. ‘It’s a book, not an etching.’ He rose to his feet from the harbour wall, held out his hand for the newspaper. ‘Come on, let me chuck that in the bin for you, then you can come and look at what I’ve found.’

  I wasn’t fooled. He still had an agenda, but I knew there wasn’t a thing I could do to discourage him. Men who had Oliver’s confidence weren’t to be swayed by small things like the fact I had fallen for somebody else.

  I formed that thought idly enough, but it struck me with a sudden force that stopped me in my tracks. I couldn’t honestly have meant that, could I? Yet I sat here in the sunshine on the harbour wall and turned the thought a thousand ways, and every way I turned it, it was true.

  Oliver, who had no way of knowing that I’d just been hit by something like a thunderbolt, asked whether I was ready and I numbly told him yes, I was, and went to see the book.

  He’d left it set out for me on the small working desk beside the bookshelves in the storage room of the museum, in the back beside the little kitchenette that had a kettle and some cupboards and a sink and not much more.

  The storage room itself was crowded thick with shelves and boxes and it smelt of dust that hadn’t been disturbed in quite some time. Still, there was proper light to read by, and an antique wooden captain’s chair that proved to be quite comfortable.

  Collecting my still–rattled thoughts, I focused my attention on the book itself.

  It was an older book, with cloth-and-cardboard covers frayed and dented at the edges and the binding at the spine so badly cracked and worn that whole sections of pages, stitched together, slid and shifted when I leafed my way along to find the place that Oliver had marked.

  He came to stand behind me, leaning over, pointing to the lines that were of interest. ‘There, you see? Below that bit about the Cripplehorn.’

  But I’d already started reading in the paragraph before that:

  At the western limit of the beach there is a rock the locals call the Cripplehorn, which at its highest point is measured more than ninety feet, and which extends beyond the cliffs to form a breakwater. Upon its eastern face two minor streams converge to form a fickle waterfall, at times a mere cascade, at times a cataract that rushes to the sand and draws a varied wealth of plant life from the rock …

  After describing all this plant life in excruciating detail, and the several types of birds that liked to nest upon the Cripplehorn, the author made a detour from his scientific facts to state:

  The base of the cascade conceals a narrow cavern safely set above the highest tide, which in former times reportedly was favoured by the Butler brothers of the nearby manor of Trelowarth for the storage of their smuggled cargoes. It is spoken still with no small pride that never once did any person of the village tell the secret of this hiding place, no matter what reward was offered by the local constable, so well-regarded were the Butlers for their generosity in sharing of the wealth they gained by working in defiance of the law. Their daring exploits were later recounted in a journal that was published by the younger of the brothers as A Life Before the Wind. Proceeding westward, one encounters an uncommon wealth of avian diversity …

  That was all that had been written of the Butler brothers. After that the author veered off once again into his birds and plants and rock formations. I read through the paragraphs again to be sure I hadn’t missed something of value, then I turned round in my chair to look at Oliver. ‘This journal of Jack Butler’s …’

  He had known that I would ask that, I could see it in his smile. ‘Yes. A Life Before the Wind. Poetic bastard, for a pirate. I’ve already looked it up, but I could only find two copies referenced, both of those in library collections in the States. There may be more, though. Give me time to do some hunting.’

  He’d impressed me. ‘And when was it actually published?’

  ‘1739.’ He didn’t hesitate. ‘Printed for some bookseller in London, in the Strand.’

  I’d have to look it up myself. I felt a faint sense of surprise that, of the brothers, Jack had been the one to leave behind a journal. From the little I had seen of him, he hadn’t struck me as the writing type.

  But then again, I’d learnt in life that people could surprise me.

  Mark, for instance, as we walked together up The Hill a short while afterwards, didn’t tease me once about my afternoon with Oliver.

  I sent a sideways glance in his direction. ‘You all right?’

  ‘I’m fine. Just thinking.’

  There’d be no use asking what about, I knew. Mark rarely shared his thoughts. Instead I asked him, ‘Did you know there was a cave below the Cripplehorn?’

  He gave a nod. ‘I used to play at pirates down there as a boy.’

  ‘You never took me.’

  ‘You weren’t old enough. It’s not an easy scramble down. And when you did get big enough, I’d grown too old myself to play at pirates.’

  ‘Did you take Katrina?’

  ‘Once. She didn’t really care for it. Too dark and damp. She liked the light.’

  We walked a bit in silence with our thoughts. Which was as well because we’d reached the steep part of The Hill where speaking started taking up more air than I could spare. But still, I found enough to ask him, ‘Will you take me now?’

  Mark was more fit than I was, and his words came without effort. ‘What, today?’

  ‘God, no.’ I took a gulp of air to fuel the burning muscles of my thighs. ‘I just meant sometime.’

  ‘Sure. There’s not much there to see, though, and the climb back up is worse than this.’

  ‘No climb,’ I said, ‘is worse than this.’

  He grinned. ‘Suit yourself. We’ll go tomorrow, if you like.’

  ‘Wednesday. Then Felicity can come along.’

  Mark seemed to find that odd. ‘Why would she want to?’

  ‘You’re an idiot.’

  ‘I’m what?’ He turned. ‘Why am I an idiot?’

  I linked my arm through his and told him fondly, ‘You just are.’

  And that was all the breath that I had left for talking till we’d finished with The Hill.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I dreamt of him that night; I dreamt of Daniel Butler lying in the bed beside me, only lying there asleep and nothing more. I heard his even breathing and I felt his warmth, the shifting of his weight against the mattress as he turned. His face in sleep was not so hardened as it looked by day. The lines were there, but smoother, an
d the slanting shadows of his lashes crossed his tanned skin peacefully.

  It seemed to me we were not at Trelowarth any more. The room felt warmer, and the night air carried strange exotic scents I didn’t recognise. But I paid no real attention to the room or to the bed, I was so focused on the man who shared it with me at that moment.

  Then as I watched his face, his eyes came slowly open and he saw me too, and smiled …

  The curtains at my window stirred in answer to the cooler breezes blowing inland from the sea along the Cornish coast, and half-wakeful and half-dreaming still, I turned my own head hopefully. But nobody was there.

  And in the darkness of the room it seemed the walls breathed out a sigh and I’d have sworn I heard a voice, not from the next room but from this one, and not talking now to Fergal but to me. I heard him.

  ‘Eva.’

  Not quite sure if I was sleeping or awake, I said, ‘I’m here.’

  No answer came except the wind, and in the silence following I found a sleep that was too deep for dreams.

  Next morning I was up and dressed before the sun had touched the hills. Downstairs, the dogs rose from their resting places like a wagging entourage and, since both Mark and Susan were still sleeping and my mind was full of restless thoughts that wanted clearing out, I went with all the dogs still bouncing round my heels and took a walk.

  I’d had some time now to adjust to the idea that I’d fallen half in love with Daniel Butler, but I still had no idea what to do about it. Any way I tackled it, the thought was still impossible. We lived in different centuries. For all I knew, we’d never meet again. And even if we did, who was to say that he would ever feel the same for me?

  He couldn’t, I decided, as I led the dogs up past the greenhouse by the path the tourists would be using when they came, an older path that wound along the high stone walls of all the older gardens where the birds were warbling joyously, unseen. He couldn’t love me, I was nothing like the women of his time. I was a novelty, but that would soon wear off and in the end, when people chose someone to love, they chose their own kind. That was common wisdom, wasn’t it?

  So why, I wondered, had I chosen him?

  I climbed the winding path in silence while the dogs ran round me, madly sniffing everywhere and tagging one another in the way that dogs will do. I nearly tripped on Samson twice, and still I didn’t know the answer. They were strange to me and new, these feelings, yet I’d never been more certain in my life of how I felt, and that alone was something I found troublesome.

  Why him? I asked a second time. Why couldn’t it be Oliver who made me feel this way? Why did it have to be a man I couldn’t have? It wasn’t fair.

  ‘It isn’t fair,’ I told the dogs, but they just wagged and grinned agreement as we reached the turning in the path where I could glimpse the ruined Beacon, rising as it always had above the blue Atlantic where the wind had carried off Katrina’s ashes.

  She hadn’t stayed, I thought, so why should I? I wasn’t bound here, and I’d done the thing I’d come to do, so why not simply leave? I knew it had to be this place that was affecting me, this place where strange grey ladies disappeared and ley lines ran below the ground, and if I went away then surely things would soon return to normal. I would leave and not be missed and Daniel Butler would forget me, and Trelowarth would go on the way it always had, without me.

  Or at least that’s what I thought, until I climbed the final few feet of the path and came out with the dogs beside the turning in the road between Polgelly and St Non’s, and saw that Mark had cleared a broad and level place up here to make a car park that was wide enough for several cars, I noticed. Or a tour bus.

  And standing there I realised that I couldn’t leave. Not yet. I turned around again and looked back down the way that I had come, to where the glass roof of the greenhouse caught the early sunlight like a mirror, and I knew I couldn’t leave till Susan had her tea room open and I’d signed the papers for the Trust to keep Trelowarth where it should be, with the Hallett family, for a good long time to come. There was nothing for it, really, but to set aside all thoughts of leaving, and resolve to stay.

  And if there was another reason, one I was less willing to acknowledge, for my choosing not to go just yet, I pushed it far back in my mind and locked it there.

  I set to work the next few days on doing what I’d promised Susan I would do. I sent the early press releases out, and made some phone calls to the local tour providers to convince them of Trelowarth’s charms.

  By Wednesday, when Felicity came up to help again, I could announce that House & Garden was considering a feature, and that one firm operating minibuses to St Non’s was eager to include us in its schedule.

  Susan, who’d been trying to decide which of the trees close by the greenhouse would be best used as the ‘cloutie tree’, stopped looking for a moment. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. They do tourist runs from Plymouth, so they pick their people up at their hotels and stop at St Non’s on their way down to Falmouth for lunch, but they wanted a different stop on the way back where their tourists could stretch a bit, walk around, and we’re conveniently right on their route. So I said we could give them a garden tour and a traditional Cornish cream tea, and they went for it.’

  Susan was delighted. ‘Well done you.’

  ‘I said they could start the beginning of August, is that still all right?’

  She’d told me she’d need that much time to get all her work properly done on the tea room. She gave a firm nod. ‘Yes. What do you think of this one?’

  I looked upwards at the tree in question while Felicity stepped back and frowned and said, ‘It ought to be a thorn.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Because most cloutie trees are thorn trees,’ said Felicity.

  Susan said, ‘But this one’s pretty.’

  ‘No, it needs the proper energy.’ Felicity held firm, and in the end we settled on the only hawthorn tree close by the greenhouse door.

  ‘Well, I suppose,’ said Susan, ‘I could have Mark take down these other two beside it, so it has a little bit more presence.’

  Felicity thought that would do very nicely. ‘And you can put a little pond or something here beside it, for the water.’

  ‘Water?’

  ‘Susan,’ said Felicity, ‘you cannot have a cloutie tree unless it’s next to water, that’s tradition.’

  ‘Ah.’ Resigned, she took another look around, with hands on hips. ‘Well, the pipes to the greenhouse run just over there, we could maybe tap into those somehow. I’ll have to speak to Paul.’

  I asked, ‘Who’s Paul?’

  Felicity smiled knowingly. ‘Her plumber. Do you know,’ she said to Susan, ‘I have never seen a project need more plumbing work than this one.’

  Susan shrugged the teasing off. ‘Is that a fact?’

  ‘If you ask me, it’s all the fault of that story Claire told us about how her grandparents met,’ said Felicity. ‘Good looking plumbers who strip off whenever it rains, and all that. It creates expectations.’

  ‘Claire’s grandfather didn’t strip off in the rain,’ Susan told her friend, amused. ‘He took his shirt off, Fee, and he was only being chivalrous.’

  ‘Yes, well, we’ve had a lot of rain,’ Felicity remarked, ‘and your Paul hasn’t been chivalrous once, has he? That’s all I’m saying. I’ll tell you who’s chivalrous,’ she turned her gaze to me. ‘Oliver. He’s been all over these past few days, looking for leads on your smugglers.’

  Susan smiled. ‘Yes, well, that’s men for you. You can hit them with a rock and it still doesn’t put them off.’

  I sent her a dry look. ‘You can’t possibly remember the rock throwing thing. You weren’t old enough.’

  ‘I didn’t say I remembered.’ She stooped to pull a straggling weed. ‘Did you really knock him flat?’

  ‘I did.’

  Felicity said that was likely why he had his eye on me. ‘Men always chase after the women who treat them
the worst. You treat them nicely, they don’t notice you.’

  Her tone was light, and yet there was a wistfulness behind it that I heard and understood.

  I said, as casually as I knew how, ‘To change the subject, if I may, Mark said he’d take me on a field trip later, if the two of you would like to come.’

  Felicity perked up. ‘Oh, yes? To where?’

  ‘The cave below the Cripplehorn. I’ve never seen it.’

  Susan frowned. ‘What cave below the Cripplehorn?’

  ‘A smuggler’s cave, apparently. You’ve never seen it?’

  She had not. Felicity was fascinated. ‘When would you be going?’

  ‘Just after lunch,’ I told them, ‘if the rain holds off.’

  The rain held off. And after lunch the four of us, with Mark in front, trekked off on our adventure.

  The dogs had howled a protest at Mark’s leaving them behind, but he’d been right. We couldn’t bring them. While the path along the coastal cliffs was not too hard to manage, when we neared the Cripplehorn itself the path became a challenge, slippery rocks descending in uneven steps towards the beach, with a red-lettered ‘Danger’ sign warning the rocks were unstable and that those who passed this way did so at their own risk. As if to drive home the point, a large red-painted box the same size as a mailbox stood next to the sign, with the words ‘Cliff Rope’ lettered in white on its front, a reminder that several times yearly some tourist who took this path had to be rescued.

  But Mark went down with the sure steps of a mountain goat, and I went after him, carefully putting my feet in the same places he had.

  Around us the black rocks rose higher and sharper, more slippery because of the spray from the sea. And the sound of the sea itself grew even louder as wind-driven waves hit the beach.

  The beach would not have met the Californian definition of a beach – there was no sand in sight, just hard round rocks and pebbles worn to smoothness by the water, shifting crunchingly wherever I set foot on them, all grey and black and lighter grey with clinging strands of dark-green seaweed trailed across the stones.