The Memory Garden (26 page)

Where on earth was Patrick?

She had started cooking soon after seven, frying the onion and the mince for spaghetti bolognaise, adding tomatoes and mushrooms, herbs and stock, stirring as it simmered. Now she moved the pan off the hob and contemplated the pan of water for the pasta. No point in doing anything about that until he was here. She looked around the kitchen. The table was laid, the salad mixed, Parmesan grated, a bottle of red wine waited open on the side. But there was no Patrick.

She had said her place, hadn’t she? She looked out of the window up at the house. Faint light glowed through the lower-floor windows. Impossible to tell whether he was in. Perhaps she ought to go and see?

No, she must leave him to come in his own time. It was an artificial situation, this, living so close to one another but knowing each other so little, needing to preserve the boundaries.

She sat down at the table, wondering whether to start on the wine, just one glass, but that might lead to a second – and what if he arrived stone cold sober? What if he didn’t arrive at all, had regretted what happened earlier? Her resolve ran out. She poured herself half a glass, turned out the kitchen light and moved into the living room, where she was struck with immediate satisfaction at how cosy she had made it – the curtains drawn and a fire crackling in the grate.

Some wine splashed on the mantelpiece as she put down the glass and she hurried back to the dark kitchen to grab a cloth from the draining board. A point of light outside caught her eye, moving far across the garden. It shone steadily, disappearing now and again, then the point becoming a shaft of light, bobbing up and down. What was Patrick doing out there in the wildest part of the garden at this hour? Assuming it was Patrick.

The beam of light was coming nearer now. She could see his boots, then his legs. She fled back to the living room with the cloth, not wanting him to see her watching him, and caught a glimpse of her face, eyes glittery, in the mirror above the mantelpiece as she scrubbed at the wine stain. After a moment, there came his special knock, three short light taps and one loud one.

Her relief as she wrenched open the door turned to anxiety again, for he wasn’t standing by the doorstep waiting to come in but hanging back, as if to deliver some excuse that he wasn’t coming to supper after all. The large torch lantern and the Barbour jacket suggested a night exercise rather than a cosy night in.

His words only mildly reassured her. ‘Is the food at a crucial stage? I’ve something to show you.’

‘What?’

‘You’ll have to come and see.’

‘Hold on a moment.’ She shrugged on her jacket, pulled on her boots and stepped out into the cold garden. There was a faint moon glowing through veils of cloud.

Patrick had already vanished, she thought at first, then she saw his dark shape separate itself from the shadow of a tree and the torch came back on. ‘Over here,’ he said, and started towards the rhododendrons.

‘Patrick, where are we going?’

‘Have patience, woman.’

‘But it’s pitch black. Shine the light over here. Ouch.’

‘Here, take my hand.’

They tripped and stumbled through the undergrowth, branches grabbing their throats like the hands of assassins, leaves slapping against their faces like knives.

‘This is crazy,’ Mel moaned. ‘Ow, that was my toe.’

‘Sorry. Just keep going. Through here – look, there’s the bench.’ He swung the lantern. ‘Duck down now. This way . . . and we’re almost there.’

They had finally reached the trampled undergrowth by the rockery; the rock itself, an invisible presence, dulling sound in the darkness. Patrick flicked off his torch.

‘Patrick . . .?’

‘Ssh. This way.’ Her hand was warm in his.

As they edged round the rock, she became aware of its silhouette – but its golden aura wasn’t the moon. It was a warmer, yellower glow than that. And then Mel saw why. The cave was full of tiny dots of light from candles burning on every ledge.

Like votives, she thought, immediately seeing the church where her mother’s funeral had taken place, how the children had been drawn to the flames, their high voices clamouring to light candles for Granny, the air pungent with incense.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she whispered, her hand still in Patrick’s.

‘I found a bag of nightlights in a cupboard and waited until it was properly dark. It felt like a ritual, laying them out and lighting them.’

‘What did you pray for?’ she asked.

‘Funny you should say that. I thought about the people who had lived here, who had created this garden. And Val. And now . . . me, you.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘It was a strange, elemental feeling out here. As if there is only some thin crust separating us from the layers of the past.’

Patrick moved behind her, snaking his arms around her waist, and they stood together in silence, Mel absorbing the fact of his warmth, his cheek on her hair, watching the lights leap and flicker.

After a moment, he removed one arm to delve into his coat pocket. ‘I kept a couple back,’ he said, showing her two tablets of wax. ‘Shall we light them?’

They crouched down by the grotto, Mel touching a flame to her candle first and standing it on the lowest ledge, then Patrick placing his next to it. He looked dreamily into her face. The words ‘for us’ passed through Mel’s mind, but he didn’t actually speak them. She stared at the flame of her light, yet not seeing it.

After a moment he stood up and stepped back. ‘There’s something else,’ he said, and took her hand again. ‘Come and see what I found when you were out.’

He shone the torch into the tangle of bushes opposite the grotto, further down the garden and along a rough pathway, recently trampled. Then he guided her down the carpet of undergrowth, the moon obligingly emerging from cloud to illuminate their way.

A minute later, a blanket of ivy rose up on their left. Patrick shone his torch upon it and through the leaves Mel glimpsed solid stone. The wall of a small building.

‘Round here,’ said Patrick, and they turned the corner to squeeze through a gap where he’d hacked through creeper and bramble. ‘There’s a door here somewhere.’ He felt across the building until she heard a handle rattle, then a click. Soft amber light fell across Patrick’s arm, then across his face as the door opened inward and they almost stumbled into a little room.

The source of the light was immediately apparent – a hurricane lamp stood on an upturned metal pail at the further side of the stone-walled hut where a double door seemed firmly sealed.

‘It’s the summerhouse, isn’t it?’ she said, her voice unnaturally loud in the small space. It smelled fusty – a collection of rotting deckchairs in a corner might be the cause of this – but the air was surprisingly dry and the wooden floor mostly intact. The shuttered shapes of windows were apparent on each side wall and to either side of the double door.

‘There must be a remarkably good damp course,’ Patrick said, banging one heel on the wooden floor. He shone the torch up at the tiled roof. ‘The whole building is in good nick, isn’t it? Perhaps Val had something done to it, I can’t remember now.’

The only pieces of furniture, apart from the useless deckchairs, were two director chairs from the house and a small picnic table laid with a cloth, a bottle of wine and two glasses.

‘Don’t tell me these have remarkably survived the years here, too,’ joked Mel.

‘I thought it might be fun to have a drink in a secret den,’ Patrick smiled, a flash of white teeth in the half-darkness. He looked as dark as a Mexican bandit in the light from the oil lamp, the planes and shadows of his strong face somehow thrilling and dangerous.

‘It is like a children’s gang hut, isn’t it?’ she laughed. ‘Perhaps we need a password and nicknames.’

‘Sounds fun,’ he whispered. They were facing one another now, close, quite close, their figures throwing up great shadows on the back wall. He smiled down at her, studying her upturned face in the glow of the lamp. ‘So,’ he said, his voice turning low, sinister, his eyes narrowing, leering at her. ‘If you want to be in the gang, you need to prove you’re worthy.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ she riposted. ‘What are you going to make me do then?’

‘Mmm,’ he said, looking around as though for inspiration. ‘How about this?’ And very slowly, he bent down and touched his lips upon hers. ‘Will that do for a start?’ he said softly.

‘You’d better try again to make sure,’ she said, her voice shaky. This time the kiss was deeper. Their mouths slid over one another, licking, nibbling, devouring. She tasted the smoky flavour of tea mixed with spearmint and an indefinable tang that was Patrick himself. His kiss felt different from Jake’s, rougher yet softer, and part of her felt inestimably sad. Then as the kiss went on she relaxed into it, squeezing her eyes tight shut against dark thoughts.

The world seemed to spin and she staggered slightly, almost pulling him over, tipping up one of the chairs.

‘Oops,’ he said, dropping her suddenly and catching at the wobbling oil lamp. ‘And this is before we’ve had the wine.’ He settled the lamp and, stepping back, righted the chair.

They stood looking at one another almost shyly, and to break the moment, Mel said, ‘Why don’t we have a drink?’ So he picked up the bottle and sloshed an inch of wine into a glass. He swilled it round, and took a mouthful, his swallow audible in the stillness. ‘St Emilion,’ he said. ‘Definitely one of Val’s finest.’ He half-filled both glasses.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘We need a gang toast.’ And they linked arms and drank around the crooks of each other’s elbow, giggling.

‘You know, it doesn’t feel like my idea of a summerhouse,’ said Mel, sitting down. Patrick took the other chair, one leg crossed horizontally upon the other, ankle to knee.

‘Well hardly,’ he said, ‘it being the middle of a chilly April night.’

‘It’s not just that. There’s something about it being made of stone . Wouldn’t it feel cool and dark in summer? And it faces the wrong way – east. That’s odd, too.’

‘I suppose , to face the house . Or else it’s another mystery to add to the rest,’ said Patrick, leaning back in his chair.

They were silent then, feeling the warmth of the wine run through their limbs, listening to the wind rising in the garden outside. How cut off they were here from the rest of the world. It could have been fifty years ago, a hundred. The wick on the lamp needed trimming, for the flame was leaping and dancing like firelight. It felt spooky rather than cosy in their hideaway now.

Mel jumped at a spider running over her hand.

‘It’s only a little one,’ Patrick teased.

‘It might have big brothers,’ she retorted, brushing at her jacket to make sure the creature had gone. She shivered.

‘Are you chilly? We can go if you like.’

‘There is supper waiting,’ she remembered, pulling herself up from the chair. ‘I’m hungry.’ ‘So am I,’ whispered Patrick, standing up and taking her into his arms.

‘You’re so lovely,’ he said later after their meal, as she sat curled up in his lap on her sitting-room sofa. He stroked her hair and kissed her yet again. ‘All red and brown and gold, like autumn. I couldn’t believe it, that I’d find someone like you down here in the back of beyond. I was worried I would end up being grumpy and lonely by myself.’

‘Nor did I think I’d find you,’ murmured Mel, nuzzling her face into his smooth-shaven neck, feeling the warm skin against her eyelids. ‘I feel safe here, safer than I’ve felt for a long time.’

‘Poor you,’ he whispered and they both fell quiet, sunk in their own reflections, as though they sensed danger in too much intimacy too soon. Then he kissed her again.

‘I don’t ever want to hurt you,’ Patrick breathed into her ear.

‘Then don’t,’ she replied, immediately regretting the sharpness of her response for he was quiet again and she was frightened that she had wounded him.

‘Patrick?’ she said, a flutter of fear in her throat.

‘Mmm?’ But his eyes had a hard, faraway look.

‘What are you thinking?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. Again, she felt unease. Another man, another planet, and he was deep , this one. Could she really face embarking on this voyage of exploration all over again? Yes, she could.

And when, later, she took him upstairs to her room, the air seemed thick with the presence of the past, not just the past of this house, but all the other times she had ever made love.

A week and a half later, Mel drove back to London. But ten days after that, she was down at Merryn once more.

Four more weeks passed at Merryn, the days and nights with Patrick slipping past like gleaming pearls on a string, Mel’s life in London but a hazy dream.

One rainy June morning she sat at her kitchen table in the cottage, absorbed in her writing. The book was growing steadily now, more than half of it done.

It was during this period
, she had just typed,
that Laura Knight began work on
Daughters of the Sun,
shocking local people by using professional models from London who posed nude, sunbathing on the rocks below Carn Barges or swimming in the sea. Laura, fascinated by the effects of the light, made study after study
. . .

Mel looked up from her laptop to riffle through her notes, before copying down Laura’s own words: ‘How holy is the human body when bare of the sun (
Oil Paint and Grease Paint
, 1936).’

Had she got the quotation right? She looked for her pencil to scribble a reminder to check it, but it had gone. When she spotted it under the table she fumbled for it with her stockinged foot, accidentally prodding the sleeping cat, which shot across the kitchen to the door.

‘Sorry,’ she sighed, and picked up the pencil to write – what? Her concentration was broken. Anyway, it must be nearly time to go. She looked at her watch. Ten. Another half an hour and Carrie would be here.

They were finally going to visit Aunt Norah today to talk about her mother, Jenna, who had been a maid at Merryn before the First World War. First Norah’s husband had been ill, then Carrie had been too busy at the hotel. Now, in mid-June, there was a slight, unexpected lull in the trails of visitors, and Carrie had phoned the night before to ask Mel if she was free.