The Memory Garden (21 page)

‘Thanks, that’s great,’ said Mel. She felt curiously self-conscious with Matt here, who was like a lively dog that wouldn’t leave her alone. She pulled open the back door. ‘C’mon, let’s go up and find Patrick.’

Patrick seemed a little taken aback when he opened his front door to see Mel and Matt together, and Mel felt she had to gabble an explanation of how Matt had called for her on the way.

In the musty dining room, Patrick showed the plan of the garden. Mel listened, privately amused, as Patrick and Matt discussed how to treat the greenhouses as though they were planning a military campaign.

‘There’s a strong chance the greenery on this one is all that’s holding it together. We’d better go carefully,’ said Patrick.

‘Leave it till last then?’ put in Matt. ‘We can start clearing the beds today.’

Another sharp pain shot from the top of her arm to her shoulder. Mel straightened and stretched, dropping her machete onto a heap of mown nettles. The smoke floating up from Matt’s bonfire made her eyes water. She squinted at her watch. Just after midday. They’d been clearing the Flower Garden for nearly two hours now, a merciless sun steadily climbing overhead. It was time for a break.

Looking about, she was amazed to see how much inroad they had made into the jungle in such a short time.

For argument’s sake they had started from the dipping pool, she and Patrick swathing away side by side, she with her machete, he with his new Strimmer, and Matt carting away barrowloads of detritus to burn further down the garden. The great fog of smoke, for the vegetation was very damp, had impeded progress until the breeze had dropped. They had worked without talking much, all of them involved in the rhythms of their tasks.

Now Mel watched Patrick swap the Strimmer for the electric saw to fell a sapling. He turned to grin at her.

‘You just love doing that, don’t you?’ Mel observed.

‘Yup. It’s the roots that are boring,’ he grumbled, grabbing a big garden fork and levering away at the base of the narrow stump without much success. She smiled to see his tousled hair, the streak of mud across one cheek.

‘Here,’ she said, grabbing some pruning shears and snapping away at the roots he’d exposed. ‘The rest will come up when we dig over the garden. Look, we’re doing well, aren’t we?’

They both gazed around them, surprised by the fact that they had effectively cleared an area the size of a tennis court.

‘I’m worried that we haven’t noticed anything worth keeping,’ said Patrick, wiping at his face with the back of his sleeve. ‘You don’t suppose we’ve gone at it too hard?’

‘A lot of the flowers would have been annuals,’ said Mel. ‘And many of the perennials wouldn’t have survived the weeds. It really is going to be a matter of clearing it all and starting again, I’m afraid.’

‘What’ll we plant?’ he asked, leaning on his fork. ‘What would work here?’

‘Mmm, well, Mum used to grow lupins, cornflowers, clarkia and nigella, sweet william and delphinium.’

‘Sounds a good start.’ He smiled, watching her. ‘You’ll have to tell me when and how to do it all, though.’

‘Of course,’ she said lightly. ‘While I’m here. Only another couple of weeks now,’ she added heartlessly, and watched him press his lips together in a rueful manner.

‘How was last night, by the way?’ she asked.

‘Oh, with Tom? All right, actually.’ Patrick grinned. ‘In fact, I might go skiing with him and his wife at Christmas.’ He returned to levering his stump.

Christmas. What will I be doing at Christmas?
Suddenly, Mel felt shut out. Patrick would go skiing with his friends and she might not even know him any more by then. All the energy she had felt this morning drained away. Picking up her machete from the nettles, she dropped it safely amongst the other tools, then walked off towards the cottage. ‘I’ll bring us all drinks,’ she shouted back in explanation.

When she returned, Patrick and Matt were resting, deep in a conversation about cricket, which had apparently provided them with some bonding at last. Mel was glad. She sat down on part of a fallen brick wall and sipped at her squash. Her shoulder was still bothering her and she had a deep scratch down one arm from a rose briar, but she was pleased that her good mood had returned.

‘I feel properly alive in the garden,’ her mother used to say, when people teased her about the large amount of time she spent on her knees in the earth. Mel now knew exactly what she meant. She gazed up at the tall trees bordering the garden – presumably at some point a deliberately grown shelter belt. She understood how trees could be sources of comfort, a protection against the world. Listen to them sigh and creak, as though whispering secrets as deep and eternal as the sough of the waves on the beach.

How many generations had sat here, where she was, in this once-lovely garden, hearing the wind in the trees, the call of the rooks, finding succour in this mellow walled haven filled with the scent of flowers . . . She looked down, shuffling the bindweed under her feet.

Then two things happened at once.

Her foot snared itself in some wire.

And someone called, ‘Ah, here you are.’ It was Irina.

‘Hello,’ Mel called, bending and pulling the wire off her foot. It was the skeleton of something metal. An umbrella. The curved handle was covered in slime and when she rubbed it with her glove it gleamed yellow. Ivory, perhaps.

She raised her head and was struck to see Irina’s expression. There was something wrong. Irina looked . . . anxious, hurt. The woman darted little looks from Patrick to Matt, to Mel.

‘I was on my way back from taking Amber,’ Irina addressed Mel in a small voice. ‘I came to see if you were in.’

‘Patrick thought we should start on the garden.’ Mel held the umbrella skeleton towards her. ‘Look, treasure,’ she said, and laughed. Irina looked uncertain.

She feels left out, thought Mel suddenly. Or is it that I’m here with Patrick? She glanced at Patrick who fortunately caught her meaning.

‘Fancy helping?’ he said pleasantly. ‘There’s plenty to do.’

Irina smiled delightedly.

‘It’s nearly lunchtime, actually,’ Patrick went on. ‘I’ve got some bread and cold meat . . .’

‘Then I can cut us all some sandwiches,’ Irina said happily.

‘Sounds great,’ said Matt. ‘I didn’t have breakfast.’

‘Didn’t get breakfast,’ said Irina in a mock-horrified voice, hands on hips. ‘You should never miss breakfast, you know.’

‘What is it about women?’ moaned Matt to Mel. ‘They can’t stop trying to be my mother.’

‘It’s because you’re such a boy,’ said Mel, laughing.

Later, as the sun began to sink, Matt and Irina left at the same moment, Matt to walk back down the hill to the hotel to help serve dinner, Irina to drive up to Paul to collect her daughter from Amber’s house.

‘I expect I can come next weekend if you want me,’ Matt had said. ‘I enjoyed it.’

‘And me,’ said Irina. ‘I will try to come, too.’

‘You are mad,’ Patrick said. ‘Completely crazy – I’m so grateful to both of you.’ He watched them go then turned back to Mel. ‘And you. You’ve been a real trooper,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe we’ve achieved so much in so short a time.’

‘Nor me.’ Mel was exhausted. ‘A hot bath for me, I think.’

‘Me, too, after I’ve put all those tools away. No, no, you’ve done enough today.’

They stood looking at each other, hesitant. I can’t ask him what he’s doing later, she thought.
I can’t ask him what he’s doing later, she thought. I’ve already taken up a lot of his time recently. He’ll think I’m chasing him.

Patrick said very tentatively, ‘I was going to drive down to Penzance this evening for a change. Find a pub or somewhere to eat. Would you like to come? Don’t worry if you’re busy.’

Mel tried her best to look as though she was weighing up whether she could spare the time from her non-existent schedule to go out with Patrick. After a moment she said with a smile, ‘Yes, I’d love to.’ Patrick gave her a broad smile back. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Come up to the house about seven?’ ‘Great,’ said Mel, her spirits soaring.

Patrick shifted the tools and vanished indoors. Mel had almost reached the cottage when she remembered her jacket, which she’d left hooked onto a tree, so she returned to the Flower Garden.

She looked around at the wounds they had gouged today in the old garden. They had scraped off the scar tissue of many years of neglect, revealing the fresh earth underneath. What were they awakening in this special place? She picked up the rusted skeleton of the umbrella, spreadeagled like a great dead bird on the pile of rubble where Irina had dropped it, and studied the ivory handle. The flowery carving shouted feminine ownership. A parasol then. Difficult to say, with no scraps of cloth remaining.

She moved over to one of the greenhouses and lobbed the metal skeleton into a corner inside amongst the nettles, out of harm’s way. What a medley of clues this place was yielding up. The mermaid plant label, the ledgers, the oil painting of the Flower Garden and now a parasol. Think of the stories they might weave if they only knew how to read them, these memories of a far-off time. A garden of memories, it occurred to her suddenly – that’s what it was . As though these clues had been laid out on purpose by someone who wished to communicate a secret. A ridiculous fancy, she knew.

Was it really just over two weeks she had been here? It was beginning to feel like for ever, that she belonged, somehow. She hadn’t even thought about Jake much recently, had she? Imagine Jake down here doing actual physical work. He would be horrified if someone handed him a spade and expected him to work himself up into a sweat digging a flowerbed. He didn’t even like gyms. Jogging round the London streets occasionally was his limit. He preferred his car. Instead she pictured Patrick again, hacking doggedly at a tree root, strong, determined , focused. Chalk and cheese, Jake and Patrick.

At half-past seven they stood gazing up at the statue of Sir Humphry Davy, inventor of the lamp that saved so many miners’ lives, where he looked down Penzance High Street to the promenade beyond and the sea. Above, in the gloaming, a few seagulls circled.

‘Bet you wish you’d handled Sir Humphry’s portfolio,’ said Mel. ‘Where’s your office? Is it round here?’

‘No,’ Patrick said. ‘It’s a few streets away, beyond the park. There’s a tiny industrial estate with workshops and offices – it’s one of those.’

They walked slowly down a side street lined with restaurants, leading to the great bulk of St Mary’s Church overlooking the bay and eventually, after peering into windows and scanning menus, they selected a small Italian restaurant.

‘Something filling is what we need after all that gardening,’ Patrick said as he pushed open the door. Even on a Sunday evening it was half-full, but the waitress led them over to a corner table by the window.

When Mel peeled off her short coat and scarf and handed them over to the waitress, she couldn’t help noticing Patrick’s appreciative glance at her gauzy blouse cinched with a heavy silver buckled belt over a gypsy skirt. He chose to keep on his black moleskin jacket and she thought how smart it looked against his white grandad shirt.

They ordered wine and pasta and Mel said, ‘Would you really have come out on your own to eat – if I hadn’t been here, I mean?’

‘Sure, why not?’ He shrugged. ‘It’s much nicer to have company but I don’t mind being on my own. I’d have brought a book.’

‘I wouldn’t like it. Of course, I’ve had to sometimes, if I’ve been away on a research trip, but I always feel so self-conscious, as if everybody is looking at me and thinking I’m a bit sad.’

‘That nobody loves you, you mean? Do you suppose people think that about men on their own?’

‘I don’t,’ said Mel, taking a gulp of the wine the waitress had poured for them. ‘I assume they’re on business or that they’re on their way somewhere and need to eat first. Silly, isn’t it?’

‘Well, let’s face it, some men are unashamedly predatory. When they see an attractive woman on her own they regard it as an opportunity.’

‘That must be it. Women are frightened of that.’

‘How are you finding being down here, locked away in the country when you’re so used to the city?’

Mel bit into a breadstick and considered the question. ‘It is lonely,’ she said finally. ‘It’s partly the quiet and the darkness – it gets very dark, doesn’t it, when there’s no moon?’

‘I love it,’ Patrick said fiercely. ‘It’s so wild, so elemental. I go out walking sometimes at night. Only places where I’m sure of the way, but it’s amazing what you see. Badgers and foxes, yes, all sorts of animals, but also the shape of the land in the moonlight. And sounds carry. Not just natural sounds, unfortunately. You can hear a car engine miles away.’

‘Don’t you miss other people?’

‘Do I feel lonely? Sometimes, yes – yes, I do. Especially since . . . well, there can be too much time to think. But I’m used to being by myself. I’ve lived on my own in London on and off for years. And being brought up in the country I’m used to everything being remote. London crowds in on you, forces you to look upon everybody else having fun, paired off, going out somewhere noisy “for a laugh”. And yet there are so many truly lonely people there, people who hate going home because there’s nothing for them there, people who are frightened of being beaten up if they walk alone from the bus stop. Not that the countryside is crime free or that people aren’t lonely here, it’s just my own experience. I feel . . . in touch with myself, to use that horrible phrase.’

‘You must have deep inner resources then,’ Mel laughed. ‘If we’re talking horrible phrases.’

‘I think a lot and I read. And there’ll be the garden, especially over the summer. And I do know people down here. I have family – Mum and Dad, and my brother Joe over near Truro. And there are a few other friends from school scattered around the county. I suppose I must invite one or two over sometime when I’m more organised.’

Their food arrived and they were silent for a bit as they ate. After a few mouthfuls, Patrick looked up and smiled at her. ‘I have to say, I’ve not felt at all lonely lately, with you living in the garden,’ he said shyly.