Sowing Secrets (10 page)

Suddenly there seem to be four people in this marriage, two of them deeply devious and one consistently batting for the wrong side. Mona is clearly motivated by jealousy: of my marriage to Mal, my being younger and prettier than she (not hard) and successful with my work. But what makes Owen such an Evil Weevil?

And, for a clever man, Mal can be very stupid about people. At some point very soon I am going to have to have this out with him, because I have definitely had enough and the campaign has evidently only just started to hot up.

My mood was now much more Aretha than old-time music hall and I could hear her belting out ‘Think!’ in my head as I plodded up the drive to Plas Gwyn – so Mal had better think what
he’s
trying to do to
me
.

‘There he is,’ Nia said, peering through the shifting veils of rain that coyly granted us – and presumably Gabe Weston too – unexciting glimpses of grass and strangely shaped trees.

I pushed my shades up on top of my head and watched him park his big silver Mercedes next to Dottie’s steaming and battered Land Rover and get out, stretching, but there was no sign of Dottie, who had vanished into the house on her arrival a few minutes before.

‘Where
is
she? She should be there to meet him!’ Nia muttered, resignedly reaching for her mack.

‘Quick, Nia!’ I said urgently. ‘He must have spotted the light and he’s coming this way – head him off.’

But now the rain was coming down harder, and he sprinted across and burst in just as I flattened myself against the wall behind the door. My sunglasses slammed down hard on the bridge of my nose, making my eyes water copiously.

‘Hi,’ he said to Nia, shaking rain off his hair in all directions like a dog. ‘What a day! I’m Gabriel Weston. Are you … ?’

‘You’re looking for Dottie Gwyn-Whatmire,’ Nia said with a polite smile that warmed on contact with his. ‘I think she went into the hall – perhaps I’d better come across and show you?’

‘Thank you, that would be—’ He stopped suddenly, having spotted me spreadeagled like a scared refugee against the wall. Possibly, going by the rather tortured sketches Nia had stuck to the walls, he assumed at first glimpse that I was some kind of strange art form.

I straightened up slowly and shuffled my feet, sneaking a quick monochrome look at him. ‘H-hi!’

‘This is Fran March, a local artist, and I’m Nia Thomas; we’re both friends of Rhodri Gwyn-Whatmire,’ Nia explained, ‘and this is my studio.’

‘Well, I didn’t mean to startle you both,’ he said kindly, ‘but your light was the only sign of life.’

My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth, but he probably just assumed I was star-struck. I turned my dark glasses beseechingly in Nia’s direction and she stopped smiling at him and said briskly, ‘Come on then, and we’ll find Dottie. I must warn you, though, that she is just a
little
bit eccentric.’

He didn’t know the half of it.

Without in the least intending to follow them my feet simply carried me across the courtyard in their wake, so I was right behind as they pushed the huge dark wooden door open and stepped inside, though I had to shove the sunglasses down my nose far enough to peer over the top before I could make anything out in the Stygian gloom.

Dottie Gwyn-Whatmire was flitting up and down the large stone-flagged hall, wringing her red-knuckled hands like a skinny wraith of Lady Macbeth, but one incongruously attired in tight corduroy jodhpurs and waxed jacket. Her face drooped sadly at the jowls, and wisps of hair the colour of wet hay showed under a drover’s hat. It was clearly not one of her good days.

Gabriel Weston moved towards her holding his hand out, but barely had time to say: ‘Hello, are you Miss Gwyn—’ before she turned on him like a fury.

‘There are
no
conveniences!’ she hissed fiercely, fixing him with pale, sunken eyes. ‘Only garderobes in the outer wall. You wouldn’t like it. The children would fall down and wash into the cesspit and drown – every last one. Your wife wouldn’t like it. The Grey Lady wouldn’t like it.’

He stood his ground. ‘I haven’t got a wife
or
little children.’

She sidled up like a nervous horse, eyeing him suspiciously. ‘No wife?’

‘No. Who’s the Grey Lady?’

She ignored that, becoming suddenly more expansive. ‘No
wife
! Then the house is too big for you! They should have told you – Rhodri should have explained. It’s not a weekend cottage, you know, it’s the birthright of the Gwyn-Whatmires!’

‘Miss Gwyn-Whatmire,’ he said patiently, ‘I’m not here to buy the house, but because I present a TV programme on garden restoration, and we’re thinking of featuring Plas Gwyn in our next series. Didn’t your cousin tell you?’

‘A TV programme?’

‘
Restoration Gardener
. You might have seen it?’ he asked hopefully. ‘I’m Gabriel Weston.’

‘No, no, no!’ She shook her head violently, backing away again. ‘Never seen it. Don’t know it. Never watch it.
Horse of the Year Show
’s the only thing worth seeing and I
go
to that. No TV even: get up, work, go to bed, that’s my motto.’

‘Is it? I mean, jolly good,’ he said heartily, and I felt pretty certain he’d never used the word ‘jolly’ before in his life. ‘Well, let me explain why I’m here: if we choose the property to feature in the programme we draw up plans for the garden restoration and actually recreate part of what was once here, at our own expense.’

She took another look at him and stopped wringing her hands, which was a relief. ‘Do the work and
pay
us?’ she queried, like he was the mad one. ‘You’re a
gardener
, did you say?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Mad, quite mad, poor man!’ she muttered. ‘Well, then, come along, garden’s this way.’ She set off past us at a brisk trot out of the door and cantered across the courtyard into the driving rain.

He turned and stared at us, his eyes wide so you could see all the splotchy green rays round the irises … which belatedly made me realise I still had the sunglasses on the end of my nose and hastily shove them back up.

Nia shrugged. ‘I did warn you she was a bit eccentric.’

He hesitated. ‘Rhodri Gwyn-Whatmire … ?’

‘Oh, he’s not like his cousin at all,’ Nia said firmly, ‘if that’s what you were going to ask. Go on, or she’ll be back to see where you’ve got to. I’ll catch up with you.’

‘Right,’ he said, and followed in Dottie’s wake.

‘What are you
doing
?’ Nia hissed at me as soon as he was out of earshot. ‘I thought you were going to keep a low profile.’

‘I was,’ I said, finally getting my voice back, ‘but clearly he has no idea who I am, so it’s safe enough.’

‘Not surprising: even your mam wouldn’t recognise you in that get-up.’

‘I thought I looked pretty good, actually,’ I said, stumbling over a tree root, ‘though I can’t see a thing in these shades.’

‘You look twice as conspicuous as usual and the sunglasses are useless as a disguise if you keep looking over the top of them, Fran!’

‘Shh! They’ll hear us,’ I warned as we caught up.

Dottie warmed to Gabe once she’d decided he wasn’t trying to buy the house, even remembering the packet of photocopied documents Rhodri’d given her to pass to him after Nia prompted her. They were somewhat crumpled and had that strange damp tents-and-sheep smell from being stuffed in the pocket of her waxed jacket.

We all surreptitiously watched Gabe Weston stride up and down with the rain darkening his hair and turning it into tight coils, then finally stand deep in thought like a particularly nice bit of garden statuary, though fully clothed.

‘Seen enough?’ Dottie enquired finally, waking him out of his reverie.

‘Enough to know Plas Gwyn has a special magic of its own,’ he agreed. ‘Spirit of place, it’s sometimes called.’

‘Is it? Only it’s bloody wet, and I’ve got work to do.’

‘Thank you then, Miss Gwyn-Whatmire, you’ve been very helpful. Perhaps I could just walk around the grounds a little more? You don’t need to stay.’

She gave him a suspicious glare, as if he might be planning to steal something, though unless he had a penchant for rude topiary and a large lorry it was hard to see exactly what. ‘Well, s’pose so,’ she conceded reluctantly. ‘Mind you leave by the back way this time: cheek of tradesmen these days, parking bold as brass in the courtyard!’

‘I’ll do that,’ he said meekly, and with another mistrustful look she finally headed off for her Land Rover.

‘Extraordinary!’ he muttered.

‘Well, we’ll leave you to it as well,’ Nia said. ‘I’ll be in my workshop, if you want to know anything else. Come on, Fran.’

I couldn’t resist one quick backward look over my shoulder, and found him staring after us, but then he almost instantly turned his back and walked off, so I expect he was just thinking of the garden.

‘I think Dottie’s blown it. What do you think?’ Nia muttered furiously as we headed off into a wet wind. ‘I
told
Rhodri that even Rollover would make a better job of it!’

‘It was a bit hard to gauge what he was thinking – but I’d say Plas Gwyn has worked its mojo on him, Dottie or no Dottie.’

‘God, I hope so! We need the publicity and even if we don’t win the makeover, being shortlisted and on the TV would be a huge help.’

I noted the royal ‘we’. I also suddenly noted the time. ‘It’s five to twelve, Nia – I’ve got to run!’ And I pelted off down the rear drive towards Fairy Glen.

By the time I got to Fairy Glen I was soaked and breathless, and all the
dolce
had gone right out of my
vita
.

I also had Kylie Minogue singing ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ on my inner Walkwoman, to which even Dolly Parton would have been preferable, and I’d just like to say to whoever up there is dishing out all this punishment: ‘Enough, already!’

Fortunately the first viewers were so late that I had plenty of time to unlock everything and adjust my wet headscarf before they rolled up in a huge gleaming off-road vehicle with two small and horribly lively children.

I could see right away that they were
not
going to suit the Glen, even before Mr Woods started smiling with silent condescension at everything I said. Then he went round tapping the walls and furniture as though he were trying to raise ghosts, while his wife seemed unable to believe that the kitchen really
was
the kitchen, and there wasn’t another one hidden away somewhere.

‘No, this is it,’ I assured her. ‘Look – cooker, kettle, even a Belfast sink – and they’re terribly trendy these days, aren’t they?’

Mrs Woods, who combined a cultivated and erratic lisp with the breathless delivery of a tiny tot, looked doubtful but asked me where the water came from.

‘The tap – see, there it is over the sink,’ I said encouragingly, turning it on and off to demonstrate.

‘No, I meant is it spwing or mains?

‘Mains. Haven’t you read the leaflet?’

‘Oh, no, we saw the advewt in the paper and just booked to see it wif one at a mawina, where we could keep the boat too.’

‘Well, we are
miles
away from the sea here,’ I lied, for actually it’s hardly any drive to get down to where Mal keeps
Cayman Blue
, if you know the little back roads.

Mr Woods opened every cupboard door in a frankly nosy way, finding nothing more offensive than tins of game soup, cockieleekie and baked beans, then finally straightened and fixed me with an accusing eye. ‘This place isn’t even
habitable
! It needs totally gutting and replastering. Plumbing, wiring, new kitchen, bathroom, an extension—’

‘Chwome kitchen,’ put in his wife firmly.

‘The garden’s a wasteland and it would cost a fortune to have the glen landscaped,’ he finished.

‘Landscaped?’ I began, when Mrs Woods suddenly broke in anxiously.

‘Whewe awe the childwen, Mike? Oh my God!’ And she rushed out shouting, ‘Bwidget! Fweddie!’

‘They won’t come to any harm out there,
I
never did,’ I assured Mr Woods, though actually he wasn’t making any move to rush out after his wife. ‘Mind you, it’s got more overgrown with every year.’

She came back with the two mutinous and slightly grubby children and looked at me accusingly. ‘Thewe’s a well! They might have fallen down and dwownd!’

‘Not unless you can drown in hard concrete! It was blocked off years ago, and first of all you’d have to prise the padlock off the cover to get at it … ’

I turned as the children shuffled their feet guiltily. ‘They haven’t … ?’

‘It must have wusted,’ she said quickly. ‘Well, Mikey, I think we’d better get on and see the uffer house, hadn’t we? Fank you, Mith … ?’

‘March.’

‘Mith March. And I hope your hair soon gwows back after the chemothewapy,’ she added mysteriously as she left.

Chemotherapy?

I looked at myself in the mirror. I wasn’t that pale and wan, was I? The rather barbaric and clashing colours of the silk scarf did make me look a bit washed out, but it was the only one of Ma’s I could find.

Maybe I should have put a bit of lipstick on. It was too late now, though, because not only was I sure that the only lipstick I might find in Ma’s room would be in Siren Scarlet, but the next viewer was on the doorstep.

He was a pleasant-seeming youngish man who whizzed round competently with a clipboard making notes, and it became more and more apparent from what he let drop that he was some kind of property developer, until eventually I came right out and accused him of it.

‘Yes, I
am
looking for development potential – and there’s a lot of land with this cottage.’

‘But it’s almost vertical and heavily wooded – you’d need to be a Frank Lloyd Wright to get anything built on that, even if you got planning permission – which you won’t,’ I assured him vehemently.

‘You’d be surprised where you can get permission to build these days,’ he said good-naturedly, ‘though you’re right about the glen. It’s steeper than I thought.’

He turned and looked back towards the cottage. ‘But there’s enough flat land around here to get two houses on, with a slice of the glen at the back for a garden each, even if I wasn’t allowed to demolish the cottage itself.’

‘Demolish the
cottage
?’

‘Well, it is a bit of any eyesore, isn’t it?’

‘It’s wonderful,’ I said hotly. ‘It’s—it’s Victorian Gothic!’

‘It’s that all right, but it needs a fortune spending on it to make it anything like a saleable proposition, so I don’t know what those estate agents were about to price it so high. I’ll be making an offer, probably – but a reasonable one!’

‘It’ll be pointless,’ I assured him coldly. ‘My mother will only sell to someone wanting to live here and love the property as she has done. As we
both
have.’

He smiled again as though he knew something about human cupidity I didn’t, and took himself off, and I went back in to close and lock the windows and back door. When I came back out a big familiar silver car was pulling up outside, and I hastily pulled my sunglasses back down and twitched my headscarf forward.

Like magic, Kylie vanished from my head to be replaced by Janis Joplin entreating the Lord to give her a Mercedes Benz, and I crooned resignedly along as the door opened and a tall man with a head of hair like a badly knotted silk carpet got out and started towards me.

There was a feeling of doomed inevitability about it all. You know that Michael Jackson video where all those ghastly zombie things are slowly and inexorably closing in on him? Well, I was starting to get the same feeling. I even looked over my shoulder to see if Tom Collinge was also sneaking up on me from the woods, trailing tattered bandages of grubby reminiscence behind him.

‘Hello again,’ Gabe Weston said warmly, smiling in a reassuring sort of way as though he thought I might become hysterical at any minute, or ask for his autograph or something.

‘Hello,’ I said unenthusiastically, though my heart was flip-flopping about like a dying fish. ‘Are you lost? You should have turned left out of the drive to get back into the village.’

‘I know, but I caught sight of your “For Sale” sign and stopped on impulse! Are you the owner?’

‘No,’ I said, taking an involuntary step back.

He smiled again, crinkling up the skin around his eyes in a way that probably drove his legion of female fans wild.

‘No. No … I’m … ’ I cleared my throat and tried again. ‘My mother owns it. I’ve just been showing people around.’

‘Have you? Then could you possibly let me have a quick look too? Only I’ve been searching for a country property for ages and it looks interesting.’

I closed the door behind me and took out my keys. ‘Sorry, I’m afraid it’s by appointment through the estate agents only,’ I said firmly.

‘Yes, but I’m here now, and you know who I am, so it’s not like you would be showing a dodgy stranger around, is it?’ he said persuasively.

‘No,’ I snapped, resisting the lure of that deep, velvet-soft voice. ‘But Fairy Glen can’t possibly be what you’re looking for.’

‘Fairy Glen? Unusual name.’

‘Not really, because it
was
one – there are still the remains of a tea garden out the back, and bits of statuary and grottoes and stuff up the glen.’

‘I know all about fairy glens, I just wasn’t expecting to find one here, in such an out-of-the-way place.’

‘No, well, it’s hugely overgrown and the cottage is tiny with
very
basic amenities. I’m sure it’s not worth your while looking at it.’

‘On the contrary, you’ve whetted my appetite Mrs … March, was it?’

‘Yes.’

‘And if you were kind enough to let me have a quick look now, I’d be able to tell for myself whether it was totally unsuitable, wouldn’t I? Then I wouldn’t waste your time and mine by making an official appointment and driving all the way back up from London especially.’

‘But I’m sure it’s not what you’re looking for!’ I protested again, last ditch.

‘How do you know what I’m looking for?’ He raised one eyebrow enquiringly.

‘I don’t, I just assumed that a tiny, run-down, barely modernised cottage with a couple of acres of nearly vertical undergrowth several hours’ drive from London isn’t what you really had in mind.’

‘So you think I’m just a time waster?’

‘It’s not an impulse purchase,’ I said severely.

‘
Please?
’ he said winningly. It might have been even more winning if I wasn’t seeing everything in shades of deepest black and grey again.

I hesitated, then turned and opened the door, sensing rather than hearing him following me into the dark hallway. He moved quietly for such a big man.

‘You know, I keep thinking there’s something very familiar about you! Have we met?’ he said suddenly from right behind me.

‘Met? No, I – yah!’ Totally missing the step down, I plummeted forward with a yelp, only to be jerked back upright by strong hands at the last minute. My shades flew off and ricocheted off the wooden hallstand, and I was certainly glad
I
hadn’t, since it is one of those spiky carved ones of a bear in a tree: prongs all over the place. I’d have had more holes than a colander.

‘Careful,’ he said, setting me upright before picking up my glasses. ‘I’m afraid these are broken and – excuse me – but do you really
need
them in midwinter?’

‘Conjunctivitis. My eyes are sensitive to light,’ I said quickly. Brilliant – hand the girl a coconut.

‘Well, there’s none in here and precious little outside now the rain is closing in again.’

He was looking at me curiously, but I avoided his gaze. ‘Perhaps we’d better press on, then, Mr Weston,’ I suggested. ‘The electricity often cuts off in a storm too, and the daylight will be going before long.’

I’d have liked to have added that the plague still visited St Ceridwen’s Well on a twice-yearly basis, and how we all hoped the chronic dysentery would clear up once we had mains water, because the stuff we got from the well was so full of nematodes we had to chew every mouthful; but I remembered Rhodri and his hopes for Plas Gwyn just in time.

Tucking an escaped strand of pinkish hair into my scarf I whisked him through Fairy Glen like Dottie on speed.

‘Sitting room. Kitchen – sinks, tap, table. Bathroom – toilet and bath.’

‘Interesting colour scheme,’ he commented, deadpan.

‘Decayed Elastoplast-pink bathroom suites were the height of fashion in the fifties when my parents put this one in,’ I said stiffly.

‘Yes, but most people wouldn’t have complemented it with mauve, magenta and gold décor – or a disco ball.’

‘Possibly not. Shall we get on? Stairs … mind your head … Two bedrooms, both
minute
… ’

‘The girlie pink one was yours?’

‘A long time ago.’ I closed the door firmly and led the way up two steps. ‘Boxroom in the turret with views of the glen.’

Here I paused for breath and he joined me at the window, slightly too close for comfort since I was backed into the embrasure with nowhere to go but vertically down should the slightly rotted frame give.

‘And the glen comes with the house?’ He glanced down at me and smiled. ‘I’d be master of all I surveyed?’

‘Well, yes, but you can’t do anything with it: it’s too steep to build on.’

‘No one in their right mind would want to build on somewhere with a wild beauty of its own – but I see there’s some flattish land around the cottage.’

‘There used to be a sort of rose arbour and tea garden behind the house. There still are roses in the glen but they’ve gone wild, though I think the
Hemisphaerica
was pretty wild to start with and it seems to love it here.’

‘Does it?’ he murmured absently, transferring his gaze from the vista to my face. ‘You know, you really
do
look familiar – I thought so up at the house. Are you
sure
we haven’t met before?’

‘Certain,’ I said positively, trying to edge away around the wall, but he took another step closer. ‘I probably just remind you of someone. Don’t you find that happens more and more as you get older?’

‘I suppose it does.’ He frowned down at me as I shifted uneasily, then suddenly put out his hand and pushed my scarf back. Half-dry hair exploded round my head; I probably looked like a mutant pink dandelion clock.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ I demanded, trying to pull the scarf back up again.

‘It’s … ’ he screwed his eyes up in an effort of memory, ‘Mary? No, Maddie, that’s it!’

‘Sorry, my name’s Fran,’ I said icily. ‘Now, if you’ve seen
quite
enough … ’

But he remained there, big, solid and entirely immovable, one eyebrow raised quizzically. ‘I’ve seen enough to know I’m not mistaken: huge eyes the colour of wood smoke and
that
hair! It may have been one hell of a long time ago, but I’m
sure
you said your name was Maddie. Well, well!’

‘And you told me you were called Adam!’ I snapped angrily, then went scarlet.

‘Did I? Must have been wishful thinking – I’ve never liked Gabriel much. So … ?’ He looked consideringly at me. ‘Didn’t we … ?’

‘Yes, but years and years ago,’ I said hastily. ‘I’d forgotten all about it until I saw a
Restoration Gardener
DVD recently and realised who you were.’

‘Oh? I’d sort of forgotten about you too, but now it’s coming back to me … or some of it, anyway! Didn’t we get loaded and go to bed in my van?’

‘Look, I would much rather
not
talk about it, if you don’t mind!’ I said stiffly. ‘It was a
very
long time ago, and totally out of character, so I’d be grateful if you forgot all about it again.’