The Memory Garden (3 page)

‘Are you sure you’re not trying to get rid of me?’ she teased him, a smile transforming her tired face.

‘No, don’t be silly,’ he said. ‘Mel, I’m saying this to you as a friend. If you don’t take some time away, I’m frightened you’ll make yourself ill. And I won’t have you getting to that stage. Think about it over the weekend, then come and see me on Monday.’

The more she thought about it, the more attractive the idea seemed, but there was one problem.

‘I haven’t got anywhere to stay. It’s Easter and everything’s booked up.’ Mel was on the phone to her sister Chrissie the following Sunday evening. Chrissie, who lived in North London with her amiable civil servant husband Rob, juggled part-time administration for a TV production company with raising two young sons, Rory and Freddy.

‘Wait a minute, Rory, darling, I’m on the phone. Sorry, Mel. Where exactly would you want to go?’

‘West Cornwall. Ideally in the Penzance area.’

‘Ah, the Wild West. Mum used to love that part.’ Chrissie sighed. Their parents had met at school in Cornwall, but further east, in Falmouth. They had moved ‘up country’ to London soon after their marriage, when Tom Pentreath qualified as a junior doctor, the start of a dazzling career as a heart surgeon. ‘It’s a shame we don’t know anyone down there since Aunty Jean died. When did she die, I can’t . . . Wait, wait, I’ve just remembered something. Mel, this is really amazing. You know Patrick?’

‘Patrick who?’

‘Patrick Winterton. Friend of Nick’s?’ Nick had been a boyfriend of Chrissie’s at Exeter University with whom she had stayed in touch after the romance had fizzled out. Chrissie stayed in touch with everybody.

‘No,’ Mel said shortly. ‘I don’t know Patrick.’ Chrissie was always doing this, assuming that she, Mel, knew everyone Chrissie knew. And with Chrissie’s vast acquaintance this could prove impossibly confusing.

‘He studied History at Exeter. Got his own business now. Something to do with the Internet,’ she said vaguely. ‘He’s still the same – funny the way some people don’t change a bit . . . Oh Rory, do stop it, darling, you can talk to Aunty Mel in a moment. Anyway, he was telling me he’s just inherited this place near Penzance from his great-uncle or someone. I’m sure he said Lamorna – isn’t that one of the places you need to go? There’s a cottage in the grounds he might do up and rent out. I don’t know what state it's in now. I miss you, Mel, I really do. Our time together was so short, but now I look back I know it was wonderful and I think. Mel, talk to Rory while I find the email address he gave me.’

In the dim glow of the wall-lights with their crimson frilled shades, the sitting room in the cottage looked dingy but cosy. Apart from a huge silver television crouching in a corner like an alien spaceship, the furniture seemed as old as the house. A horsehair sofa with wooden arms, two matching fireside chairs, all with lace antimacassars laid over their backs, were arranged before the small fireplace where a neatly piled pyramid of paper, kindling and wood awaited the touch of a match. A fire would probably cheer up the room, but there was no point lighting one this late. Mel wondered idly where more wood might be stored. Another task for the morning.

She sank down onto one of the chairs. It was surprisingly comfortable. As ever, her professional interest drew her to the pictures on the wall. Instead of the cheap reproductions and mass-produced prints that landlords of holiday cottages often inflict on their tenants were half a dozen fine watercolours of flowers.

She got up to view the one hung above a mahogany bureau. The weak light reflecting off the glass forced her to lift it off the wall in order to study it properly. The words
magnolia sargentiana robusta
were painted lightly beneath the delicate rendition of three pale pink flowers on a woody stem, followed by the initials
P.T.
She noticed the needle-fine detail of the stamens, the light wash of colour blushing deeper towards the centre of the blooms, the gloss of the wood. It was meticulously observed and executed.

She replaced the magnolia and moved to consider the others. There was a creamy
rhododendron macabeanum,
a scarlet camellia, a purple iris and two kinds of rose. Each picture was as exquisite as the last. And each was signed
P.T.
Before she replaced the sixth and last on the wall, she turned it over hoping for a date. But the brown-paper backing was blank.

A plastic travel alarm clock on the mantelpiece, looking as out of place as the telly in this dingy Victorian setting, showed five to ten. Mel went to haul the suitcases upstairs.

In the larger of the two bedrooms the Victorian oak double bed, she was relieved to see, was made up with a plump duvet, rather than old-fashioned sheets and blankets. However, the musty smell was, if anything, more intense in here. She dumped the cases on the floor, wondering where she would stow everything tomorrow. By the door was a rough-hewn chest-of-drawers with a wedge of cardboard under one front claw foot. A cracked jug stood in a washing bowl on top and Mel, clutching an armful of clean underwear, traced its painted pattern of storks with her finger.

With her free hand she pulled at the knob of the top drawer, intending to stuff the underwear in it, but the drawer wouldn’t move. She dropped the clothes on the top and tugged at it with both hands. It opened halfway and stuck. Mel peered inside.

Caught at the back was a wad of yellow newspaper which she gently eased out and unfolded. The date was ripped but she held the edges of the tear together until she could read the words
March 1912
. Almost one hundred years ago. Her attention was caught by a short piece about a train-load of unemployed tin miners and their families leaving Penzance to join a ship to the Cape from Southampton.
The stream of emigrants shows no ebb, but still runs on, as fast and deep as ever
. . . the article said.

She turned the paper over. Amidst the advertisements for patent remedies and ladies’ fashions was another news article.

TRAGEDY AT NEWLYN

Soon after ten o’clock on Saturday evening, drinkers were alerted to a sudden blaze in the upper storey of the Blue Anchor Inn by the harbour, (proprietress Mrs Adeline Treglown). An alarm was raised, the building evacuated and help came from the coastguards, some of the crew of His Majesty’s ship
Mercury
, and fishermen. Although the fire was brought under control, the body of a man has been found in the wreckage. He was later identified as Arthur Reagan, aged 52, a visitor from London. An inquest will be held next week.

Mel read it twice, wondering why someone had kept it. Was it just to line the drawer, she wondered. She refolded the paper and dropped it back in the chest.

As she pulled on an old T-shirt nightdress and brushed her teeth at a little washbasin she thought about events at the Blue Anchor a century ago, imagining that His Majesty’s sailors must have been propping up the bar when the fire broke out, and presumably fought the flames whilst the worse for wear. She wondered at the serendipitous way other lives had leaped out of the past and into her consciousness. She had only been looking for somewhere to stow her knickers and had been given a story instead.

Cornwall was one of the most ghost-ridden counties in England, Mel’s mother had once told her. There was a time when they were children that William relished reading Mel and Chrissie Cornish ghost stories of headless horsemen, of mermaids and spooky lights luring ships onto wrecks until the sisters lay in their beds at night rigid with fear, unable to sleep. There was one particular favourite of his about the ghost of a suicide buried at a crossroads, which could only be prevented from walking by a spear driven into the chest of the corpse. Little Mel would have nightmares about it, waking screaming, until their mother took the book away. She used to counter the girls’ night fears with an old Cornish prayer she had been taught as a child – what was it? Something about being saved ‘from ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties and things that go bump in the night,’ ending with ‘Good Lord, deliver us!’

Just then, there was a particularly loud creak from outside on the landing. Mel, lying in bed, tensed up, her sixth sense switched onto high alert.

It’s just the wooden stairs settling, she soothed herself. As fear slowly receded, the ghouls of doubt and sorrow clamoured for attention instead, and waves of desolation washed over her. She cried a little, feeling as vulnerable as a child lost in the dark. Eventually, as she used to when tiny, she cuddled a pillow for comfort. When she slipped into fitful sleep, she could almost hear her mother’s voice whispering, ‘Everything will look better in daylight, darling.’ She only hoped that without her mother there this mantra would still hold true.

As she slept, the house whispered its secrets.

***

I lay everything in the drawers like Jenna said except the books Mr Reagan gave me. Then I see the paper in the bottom of the bag. I smooth it out. No need to read it again, I could tell you every word by heart. And what it means. That I’ve lost everything before I even found it. And because of that I’m sent far from home to this bare attic room with its sight of the early-evening sky. Outside , the rooks whirl in dozens, nay, hundreds, chattering and arguing like fishwives on market-day. Look at them go! Off they swarm to the pine trees on the hill beyond.

A clatter on the stairs. ‘Pearl?’ It’s Jenna .

Quickly I fold the paper, open the top drawer of the chest and shove it inside, just as she bursts into the room.

The wind got up in the small hours of the night, howling down the chimney, playing chase through the trees, rattling the windows like some demented child-spirit. Mel awoke at three and lay tense and wakeful, hiding out like a small animal in its hole until, at first light, the gale quietened and she drifted into exhausted slumber.

When she opened her eyes next, the room was filled with sunlight and someone was banging on the front door. She sat up in a daze and looked at her watch. Ten past nine – she never slept this late in London. Throwing back the duvet, she reached for her dressing-gown, then, still befuddled with sleep, she stumbled downstairs.

She unlocked the front door and peeped out in time to see a tall, slim woman disappearing back up the track.

‘Hello,’ Mel croaked, and the woman swung round. Seeing Mel, she hurried back, her dark curly hair blowing about. She was huddled in a zip-up fleece, her arms folded tightly across her chest against the cold. One hand, Mel saw, clutched a car key. She opened the door wider.

‘I’m sorry, I wake you up. I am Irina.’ The woman was about Mel’s age, 37, perhaps a couple of years younger, and Mel liked her instantly. Her eyes were black pools of sadness in her heart-shaped face, but when she smiled, her teeth showed very white in contrast to her olive skin and her face seemed to light up from within. Her voice was higher and clearer than it had seemed on the phone, with a lilt Mel couldn’t quite place.

‘Oh hi,’ Mel replied. ‘Don’t worry, I needed to get up. Why don’t you come in?’ She stood back, holding the door, but Irina glanced at Mel’s state of undress, must have detected the bat-squeak of uncertainty in her voice and shook her head.

‘No, I have my daughter in the car. I only came to see that you’d got here safely. I’m sorry that I wasn’t here last night. I had to collect Lana from a friend’s house, you see. Is everything all right? You had a bad journey?’

Mel explained about getting lost and how she hadn’t been able to phone ahead. ‘It was brilliant, you leaving the food in the fridge,’ she said. ‘I’d have starved otherwise.’

‘It was no problem. I don’t know what else you need, but there is a good shop in the village,’ Irina told her. ‘One of the ladies sells food she has cooked herself. Though if you want the big supermarket you must go to Penzance.’

‘How far is the village? I’m not sure I can face driving today, especially anywhere that means going back the way I came.’

Irina smiled and pointed along the track. ‘It’s maybe five, six minutes’ walk down the hill. Not far.’ She hunched her shoulders and shivered. ‘Goodness, this wind.’

Mel took a breath of the salty air. ‘It’s lovely,’ she said. ‘So fresh after London.’

‘Where do you live in London? I used to live in Wandsworth,’ Irina said.

‘I live in South London too – near Clapham South tube station. How long were you there?’ Mel asked, wondering again about Irina’s origins but feeling it was too early in their acquaintance to ask.

‘A year, it must be,’ Irina said, a shadow crossing her face. ‘Here I have been for two.’

Mel opened her mouth to ask where before Wandsworth, but Irina had already moved on.

‘Please call me if you need help,’ she said. ‘I live at the cove – the house with the yellow door. It’s called Morwenna. You’re welcome to knock on the door if you need anything, or just to have coffee. And of course you have my telephone number.’

‘Yes, yes, I do. Thanks. That’s really kind.’

Mel watched Irina hurry back up to the road to where she could just glimpse the mud-splashed rear of a red car. A moment later the engine spluttered into life, roared and the car moved away. Patrick had said Irina looked after Merryn Hall, she remembered as she closed the door, shivering. What was she – a housekeeper, perhaps? But surely Patrick wasn’t grand enough to have a housekeeper – not from what Chrissie said about him and not if he didn’t live here. A cleaner then. Yet that didn’t sound right. Irina hardly matched the stereotype of a country cleaner – apple-cheeked and middle-aged with a rural accent. There was something intriguing, exotic about Irina. She had a face full of character, one Mel would have liked to draw. Perhaps this holiday would be a good opportunity to take up painting again. Except, she reminded herself sternly, as she shuffled through to the bathroom, it wasn’t a holiday and she should be concentrating on writing about other artists, not becoming one herself. Her mother had been right, though. She definitely felt more cheerful this morning.