The Memory Garden (30 page)

Swiftly, Pearl danced back one step towards the sofa and bobbed down as though to scoop up the discarded envelope.

‘Ah, Charles.’ Mr Carey’s eyes passed over Pearl, as he came into the room, a slight puzzled frown on his face, and focused on his nephew. ‘I need you in the office, if you wouldn’t mind. There’s a matter concerning the Top Field I wish to, ah, acquaint you with.’

Pearl watched impatience flash across Charles’s features, to be doused by cold politeness. ‘Of course, sir,’ he said, and followed his uncle from the room.

Pearl tossed the envelope onto the fire, drew the screen across and hurried out to the kitchen to prepare tea. But as she piled cups on a tray and cut thin slivers of bread with the neatness and preciseness of long practice her mind was elsewhere.

What to do, what to do
, echoed in her head in rhythm to the sawing of the bread-knife.

There was no doubt that matters with Charles were reaching some kind of climax engendered by his thwarted ambition. The trouble was that any future she might have beyond her present position now lay in his hands. What she couldn’t discern, and what mattered to her most of all, was how much he cared about her.

The previous Sunday, they had made love in the studio, then they had quickly dressed for it was getting too chilly there to dally unclothed. He had paced the room in growing agitation, stopping every now and then to prod a discarded canvas with one foot or to stare at one of the many propped on ledges around the room.

‘I can’t stay here, I can’t live this life.’ Charles seemed to be talking to himself, but her hands froze on the boot she was buttoning. He turned to her. ‘It’ll be a prison. Do you see before you a farmer – do you, girl? Can you see me striding the fields examining cows’ hooves? Worrying about the price of potatoes? Discussing the weather with sons of the soil?’

Pearl had heard him speak like this before, and it alarmed her. But lately, as failure followed failure, his paintings fetching cheer of no market, he seemed more and more embittered.

‘Your uncle won’t keep you for ever,’ she said carefully. All the servants were aware of their master’s increasing impatience with his nephew. How could they ignore the arguments over Charles’s frequent disappearance to paint, his trips to London.

‘I need to travel. France – I’d go to France if I could. To study. Learn new fashions.’

‘But how will you feed yourself? Pay your teachers?’ Pearl asked in a reasonable voice.

‘Someone will show this new painting. I know they will. Then I’ll sell it and I’ll go.’

Their eyes met – his, wild, challenging; hers immensely sad.
And what about me?
was their message.

‘Why don’t you come with me?’ he said.

‘How can I?’ said Pearl. ‘We have no money. It’d be daft . . .’ Her thoughts trailed off. Arles, Paris. She remembered her father’s stories, what seemed like so long ago now. Of the intensity of the light, the colours of the landscape, the relaxed pace of life. But that’s all they were to her – stories, pictures in books, dreams. Not for her, when all she knew was a few square miles of rocky coast and scrubby storm-swept fields. Here at least she had a home, people who in a funny sort of way belonged to her. And here she had her own dream, to draw and paint. Where was he taking her? What was he doing? It was frightening.

‘Don’t you love me?’ he said fiercely now. ‘Don’t you trust me?’

‘I love you . . .’ she said, but couldn’t manage to say she trusted him. Something told her he wasn’t safe, that she couldn’t cross the divide into his world. There were all his promises – that his friends would help her. What were they worth?

‘Did you give Mr Knight my sketchbook?’ she had asked, soon after the party.

‘Oh yes,’ Charles said. ‘I’ve got it in my room. I’ll return it to you.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘Oh, he admired the drawings. Said you were to be encouraged.’

‘Was that all?’ Pride swelled in her throat, but she couldn’t live on pride. ‘What do I do now?’

‘Practise. Practise what I teach you.’

So there was to be no further help from the artists, then. But what did she expect?

Sometimes, if the family was away and discipline lax she would walk on the cliffs and pass one of the Knights or Mr Birch or one of their friends sketching the cove or working furiously to catch the drama of an approaching storm, paint splashing carelessly onto bushes and rocks around. They would glance at her and nod politely, their eyes faraway, and she would strain to catch sight of their work, before hurrying on, too shy to stay and try to talk. To them she must be just some local girl. A servant. No one.

‘I do trust you,’ she ventured, ‘but it’s too much, too big. I can’t . . .’

He studied her. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I see.’

And what would people think? she wanted to ask. Would he marry her if she went away with him? He hadn’t said so. Married – to Charles. She tried to imagine the reaction of the family, of the other servants, and nearly laughed. It wasn’t possible. Even if they were away from here – abroad. Free.

Terror engulfed her.

She watched him cross the floor to survey a canvas _’u of on an easel standing to one side, alone: her own painting, worked at laboriously over many months, almost finished now. She rose, wrapping her shawl about her, and walked over to hover behind him.

After a moment he nodded slowly. ‘It’s going well. Very well.’

It was the portrait of Charles in the Flower Garden, first sketched in the summer over a year ago now. She smiled as she remembered how they had waited until a Sunday when the garden was empty, the family on a visit to friends down the coast, Aunt Dolly with a cousin in Mousehole. A year, more than a whole year to arrive at this point.

Charles laughed suddenly. ‘Does it really look like me?’

‘I think it does, yes,’ she said seriously.

‘Perhaps you should put in a symbol. Saint Mark is known by a lion, Mercury by his serpent staff.’

Suddenly she saw what he meant. ‘A paintbrush,’ she said. ‘I will give you a paintbrush. That will be your sign.’

What to do, what to do
, rang in her head. The wafers of bread fell from the loaf like discarded leaves from a sketchbook, like useless hopes.

She couldn’t leave this place, her place of safety, and travel with him, could she? Why couldn’t she? In her heart of hearts she knew the answer. She didn’t quite trust him. Oh, why couldn’t everything stay as it was now for ever? Why did it have to change?

****

‘I’ve remembered the name, my dear,’ came the quavery voice down the telephone line. ‘The boy at my school who lived at Merryn. It was Peter. Peter Boase.’
Norah Varco had rung Mel the very evening after she and Patrick found Pearl’s grave.
‘That is the most extraordinary coincidence, Mrs Varco,’ said Mel, and went on to explain what they had discovered that day.
‘Peter would have been their boy, then,’ agreed Mrs Varco. ‘He was one of the oldest when I started at the school. I don’t remember much about him. He walked back a different way and his family didn’t go to our church or anything. He was a quiet boy. Not stupid, no. Just kept his thoughts to himself. We didn’t take much heed of him. His name and that he was one of the quiet ones, that’s all I know.’
‘When was this, Mrs Varco? What year are we talking about?’
‘What? Oh, 1927, must have been. That’s when I went to school. He’d have been twelve, I suppose, or thirteen for he wasn’t there long. Does this help you?’
‘It might be very useful. I suppose he might not be alive still – but if we could find out where he lived, whether he had any children . . .’
‘It is another clue,’ Mel said to Patrick as she finished the call.
Patrick didn’t look up from the kitchen table, where he was piecing together her elderly iron, which had given up the ghost.
‘Look, I think I’ve found the trouble,’ he said, holding up a piece of burned wire. ‘Whoever put this together should be shot . . . Sorry, what’s the clue?’ He picked up a tiny pair of clippers and shaved more plastic insulation off the copper wire.
‘The old lady I met remembers a boy who lived here at Merryn,’ Mel explained. ‘His name was Boase. I think he might have been John and Pearl’s son. And if she had children, she might have had grandchildren. And we might find out more about her.’
He looked at her over the top of his reading glasses. ‘That might not be easy. Think of all the Boases we found in the phone book.’ Mel had checked through Patrick’s directory when they got home that afternoon. ‘Ah, just a turn of the screw here, and I’ll fit this back on.’ He plugged the iron into a socket and at once it started to heat up.
‘You’re a genius,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’
‘Iron me a shirt?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘But I’ll give you a kiss to say thank you.’ And she did.
After supper, Patrick went back up to the house to prepare paperwork for a meeting he had the next day.
It was still light and Mel fetched a weeding fork and went to work in the Flower Garden . It was a beautiful breezy evening and she weeded happily for half an hour. It felt peaceful and secure within these walls. The desolation she had felt in Paul graveyard had faded away. She thought about the Boases living in her cottage with their little boy , maybe other children, too. Now that she was building up information about Pearl, she felt she was beginning to get a sense of her. Sometimes it felt as though she was nearby, watching.
The white bird was perched in a hawthorn bush close by, singing its evening blackbird song. Only when the ginger cat came sauntering into the garden, its tail flicking, did it fly high up into a tree.

The breakthrough, when it came, was quick and unexpected.

Mel spent a frustrating week towards the end of July chasing fragments of information about Pearl, her husband John and son Peter, through the Merryn archive, in parish register entries for baptisms and burials, old telephone directories, anything she could think of. She had even gone up to London for a couple of days to visit the Family Records Centre.

Even after all this, barely a page of her A4 notebook could be filled. She sat in Patrick’s kitchen one Saturday lunchtime and read down the lines. Pearl Treglown had been born in Newlyn in 1894, had married John Boase, Head Gardener of Merryn Hall, in April 1914, when she was already pregnant, as she gave birth to Peter five months later, in September 1914. She had died young, in 1925, cause of death given as pneumonia following an asthma attack. There were no photographs of her in the archive and the only further mention after 1914 in the household accounts ledger was where ‘Mrs Boase’ was paid small sums in respect of helping with laundry.

‘Thirty-one,’ Mel told Patrick. ‘I still can’t believe she died so young.’ Such a short life and Pearl’s legacy was a child and seven paintings.

Mel had not been able to trace the births of any more children and was reasonably convinced there had been none. The question was, had Pearl pursued her talent any further? What kind of woman had she been? Had there been genuine thwarted ambition there, or had she been content with her lot in life? Were there any more paintings to be found? If she could only track down Peter’s descendants she might, just might, find the answers to some of these questions. And she wanted them for her book.

‘I know it might all lead to nothing, But you want to find out too, don’t you? It’s a mystery concerning the history of your house.’

‘One of many,’ Patrick agreed. ‘And I’m glad you’ve discovered more about the garden. That’s really interesting about Mr Carey’s father.’

Old Selwyn Carey had been the creator of the garden of Merryn Hall. Mel had found a great wadge of documents, including ground plans, a ledger, lists of plants and receipts, even a notebook record of his thoughts and ideas. It was he who had grown the handkerchief tree that his grandson Charles loved, from a cutting a plant collector had brought him.

‘What have you found out about Peter Boase, anyway?’ said Patrick.

Mel looked down at her notes. ‘He married a farmer’s daughter, Sonia Westcott, at Paul church in 1939. He, too, is described as a gardener and they had three children – Richard, Ann and Michael in 1941, 1946 and 1948. I also found his name in Army records. He was called up in 1940.’

‘Explains the gap between children. He must have been away most of the war.’

‘Yes, and he died in 1985. Then I start to get a bit stuck. I’ve found the dates of Richard and Michael’s marriages but nothing for Ann. Michael moved to St Austell and he’s had at least two children. The question is, where are they all now?’

‘I see what you mean. Where do you start to look?’

‘It’s got to be round here, I suppose. Though I don’t fancy ringing up all the Boases in the directory. Oh good, is that the postman?’

The sound of a vehicle made her half-rise in her seat to see the van pull up outside the Gardener’s Cottage.

‘I’ll just nip down and see what he’s got,’ she said. ‘The car tax-disc might finally have arrived.’

The postman handed her the brown envelope that she had been hoping for from the Vehicle Licensing Office, together with a small white one addressed to her in shaky biro.

‘Going back up to the hall, my dear?’ The postman asked. ‘Take these and save my old legs?’

‘Of course,’ she said, grasping the pile of catalogues and magazines that he passed her and pushing them awkwardly under one arm.

She smiled a vague goodbye and, while struggling not to drop Patrick’s post, ripped open the white envelope, pulling out the single sheet of paper inside. She unfolded it and saw at once that it was from Norah Varco.

Dear Mel,

I have a niece in Buryan I spoke to on the telephone last week. Jo Sennen, her name is. She thinks she knows Peter Boase’s son Richard because her friend’s daughter was courted by Richard’s son for two years. She rang me back today to confirm that he is the right Richard Boase and to give me his address. My hearing, as you know, is not too good, but Richard was a farmer up Zennor way and I heard the address as Greenacre Farm, Long Lane, nr Zennor. I hope this information is of use to you.

Yours respectfully,