The Forgotten Garden (50 page)

Cassandra looked at him.

‘My job, oncology; it was too relentless. The patients, the families, the loss. I thought I’d be able to handle it, but it builds up, you know?

Over time?’

Cassandra thought of Nell’s last days, the ghastly sterile smell of the hospital, the cold, blank gaze of the walls.

‘I was never cut out for it, really. I figured that much when I was still at university.’

‘You didn’t think of changing your degree?’

‘I didn’t want to disappoint my mum.’

‘She wanted you to be a doctor?’

‘I don’t know.’ His eyes met hers. ‘She died when I was a kid.’

And then Cassandra understood. ‘Cancer.’ Understood, too, why he was so keen to forget the past. ‘I’m so sorry, Christian.’

He nodded, watched as a black bird flew low overhead. ‘Looks like rain. When the rooks swoop like that, there’s rain coming.’ He smiled shyly, as if to apologise for the swift change of topic. ‘Meteorology has nothing on Cornish folklore.’

Cassandra picked up her gardening fork. ‘I reckon we work another half-hour then call it a day.’

Christian looked at the ground suddenly, and stubbed his boot against the earth. ‘You know, I was going to get a drink at the pub on the way home.’ He glanced at her. ‘I don’t suppose, that is, I wonder if you’d like to come?’

‘Sure,’ she heard herself say. ‘Why not?’

Christian smiled and his face seemed to relax. ‘Great. That’s great.’

A fresh, moist gust of salty breeze brought an elm leaf drifting down to land on Cassandra’s head. She brushed it off and returned her attention to her bracken patch, dug the little gardening fork beneath a long thin root and tried to wrestle it from the ground. And she smiled to herself, though she wasn’t quite sure why.

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A band had been playing at the pub so they’d stayed and ordered pies and chips. Christian told self-deprecating stories about being back at home with his dad and stepmum, and Cassandra divulged some of Nell’s eccentricities: her refusal to use a potato peeler because it couldn’t trim as close as she could with a knife, her habit of adopting other people’s cats, the way she’d had Cassandra’s wisdom teeth set in silver and turned into a pendant. Christian had laughed, and the sound so pleased Cassandra that she found herself laughing too.

It was dark when he finally dropped her back at the hotel, the air thick with mist so that the car’s headlights glowed yellow.

‘Thank you,’ said Cassandra as she hopped out. ‘I had a good time.’

And she had. An unexpectedly good time. Her ghosts had been with her, as ever, but they hadn’t sat so close.

‘I’m glad you came.’

‘Yeah. Me too.’ Cassandra smiled against her shoulder, waited a moment, then closed the door. Waved as his car disappeared into the fog.

‘Phone message,’ said Samantha, waving a small slip of paper as Cassandra entered the foyer. ‘Been out, have you?’

‘The pub, yeah.’ Cassandra took the paper, ignored Samantha’s raised brows.

Phone call from Ruby Davies, it read. Coming to Cornwall on Monday. Booked to stay at the Blackhurst Hotel. Expecting progress report!

Cassandra felt a wave of genuine pleasure. She would be able to show Ruby the cottage and the scrapbooks and the hidden garden.

Ruby, she knew, was someone who would understand how special they all were. She would like Christian, too.

‘Someone dropped you home then, did they? Looked like Christian Blake’s car.’

‘Thanks for the message,’ said Cassandra with a smile.

‘Not that I got much of a look,’ Samantha called as Cassandra disappeared up the stairs. ‘I wasn’t spying or anything.’

Back in her room, Cassandra ran a hot, deep bath and tossed in some lavender salts Julia had found for her sore muscles. She took the scrapbooks with her and laid them on a dry towel spread across the tiled floor. Careful to keep her left hand dry for page turning, she eased 355

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into the tub, sighing with pleasure as the silky water surrounded her, then leaned against the porcelain side and opened the first scrapbook, hopeful that some missed detail about Rose’s marks would jump out.

By the time the water was tepid and Cassandra’s feet were pruned, she’d found little of any use. Just the same veiled mention by Rose of

‘marks’ that embarrassed her.

But she had found something else interesting. Unrelated to the marks, but curious nonetheless. It wasn’t just the words themselves, but the tone of the entry that struck Cassandra. She couldn’t shake the feeling that it meant far more than it appeared to say.

April 1909. Work has started on the wall at the cottage. Mamma felt, and rightly, that it was best to do it while Eliza is Away. The cottage is too vulnerable. It was all well and good for it to remain exposed in olden times when its use was more nefarious, but it no longer needs to signal out to sea. Quite the contrary: there is none among us now who wishes exposure. And one can never be too careful, for where there is much to gain, there is ever much to lose.

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Blackhurst Manor, 1909

Blackhurst Manor, Cornwall, 1909

Rose was weeping. Her cheek was warm and her pillow wet, but still she wept. She clenched her eyes against the sneaking winter light and cried as she hadn’t since she was a very little girl. Wicked, wicked morning! How dare the sun so surely rise to gloat over her misery?

How dare other people go about their business as if God were in his heaven, when yet again Rose had woken to see the end to her hopes writ in blood? How much longer, she wondered, how many more times must she tolerate this monthly despair?

In some ghastly way it was better to know, for surely the worst days were those in between. The long days in which Rose allowed herself to imagine, to dream, to hope. Hope, how she had grown to hate the word. It was an insidious seed planted inside a person’s soul, surviving covertly on little tending, then flowering so spectacularly that none could help but cherish it. It was hope, too, that prevented a person taking counsel from experience. For each month, after her bleeding week, Rose felt a resurgence of the foul creature, and her slate of experience was wiped clean. No matter that she promised herself that this time she wouldn’t play along, wouldn’t fall prey to the cruel, propitious whispers, she always did. Because desperate people cling to hope like sailors to their wreck.

In the course of a year there had been one small reprieve from the terrible cycle. A month when the bleeding hadn’t come. Dr Matthews had been duly summoned, had conducted an examination and uttered the blessed words: she was with child. What bliss to hear one’s dearest wish spoken so calmly, with so little thought for the months of disappointment that had come before, with steadiness and confidence 357

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that all would continue. Her stomach would swell and a baby would be born. Eight days she had nursed the precious news, whispered words of love to her flat stomach, walked and spoken and dreamed differently.

And then, on the ninth day—

A knock at the door but Rose didn’t stir. Go away, she thought, go away and leave me be.

The door creaked and someone entered, took infuriating care to be quiet. A noise—something being placed on the bedside table—and then a soft voice by her ear. ‘I brought you some breakfast.’

Mary again. As if it wasn’t enough that Mary had seen the sheets, marked with their dark reproach.

‘You must keep your spirits up, Mrs Walker.’

Mrs Walker. The words made Rose’s stomach tighten. How she’d longed to be Mrs Walker. After she’d met Nathaniel in New York, had arrived at dance after dance with her heart pulsing in her chest, scanned the room until she spied him, held her breath until their eyes met and his lips spread into a smile, just for her.

And now the name was hers yet she had proved herself unworthy of it. A wife who couldn’t perform the most basic of a married woman’s functions. Couldn’t provide her husband with the very things a good wife must. Children. Healthy, happy children to run across the estate, turn cartwheels along the sand, hide from their governess.

‘You mustn’t cry, Mrs Walker. It’ll happen for you in good time.’

Each well-meant word was a bitter barb. ‘Will it, Mary?’

‘Of course, ma’am.’

‘What makes you so sure?’

‘It’s bound to, ain’t it? A woman can’t avoid it if she tries. Not for long.

There’s many I know would be glad to escape it if way were known.’

‘Ungrateful wretches,’ said Rose, face hot and wet. ‘Such women don’t deserve the blessing of children.’

Mary’s eyes clouded with something Rose took for pity. Rather than slap the servant’s plump, healthy cheeks, she turned away and curled up beneath her covers. Nursed her grief deep within her stomach.

Surrounded herself with the dark and empty cloud of loss.

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Nathaniel could have drawn it in his sleep. His wife’s face was so familiar to him he sometimes thought he knew it better than his own hand. He finished the line he was sketching and smudged it slightly with his thumb. Squinted and tilted his head. She was beautiful, he had been right in that. The dark hair and pale skin, pretty mouth. And yet he took no pleasure from it.

He filed the portrait sketch in his portfolio. She would be glad to receive it as she always was. Her requests for new portraits were so desperate he could never say no. If he didn’t present a new one every few days she was likely to weep and beg him for assurances of love. He drew her from memory now, rather than from life. The latter was too painful. His Rose had vanished inside her own sorrow. The young woman he had met in New York had been eaten away, revealing this shadow Rose, with darkened eyes from lack of sleep, worry-faded skin, agitated limbs. Had any poet adequately described the wretched ugliness of a loved one turned inside out with grief?

Night after night she presented herself to him and he consented.

But Nathaniel’s desire had vanished. What had once excited him filled him now with dread and, worse, guilt. Guilt that when they made love he could no longer bear to look at her. Guilt that he could not give her what she wanted. Guilt that he did not want the baby as desperately as she did. Not that Rose would believe that. No matter how many times Nathaniel assured her that she was enough for him, Rose would not be convinced.

And now, most mortifying of all, her mother had come to see him in his studio. Had perused his portraits somewhat woodenly, before sitting in the chair by his easel and launching her oration. Rose was delicate, she started, had always been so. The animal drives of a husband were likely to cause her great harm and it would be best for all if he could desist for a time. So disquieting was it to conduct such a conversation with his mother-in-law, Nathaniel had been unable to find words or inclination to explain his own position.

Instead he had nodded his accession and taken to seeking solitude in the estate garden, rather than his studio. The gazebo had become his workplace. It was still cool in March, but Nathaniel was only too willing to forgo comfort. The weather made it less likely that anyone else would seek his counsel. Finally, he could be at ease. Being inside 359

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the house over winter, with Rose’s parents and her suffocating needs, had been oppressive. Her sorrow and disappointment had permeated the walls, the curtains, the carpets. It was the house of the dead: Linus locked away in his darkroom, Rose in the bedroom, Adeline lurking in the corridors.

Nathaniel leaned forward, attention caught by the spill of weak sunlight through the rhododendron branches. His fingers twitched, longed to capture the light and shade. But there was no time. The canvas of Lord Mackelby sat before him on the easel, beard painted in, blush-shot cheeks, lined forehead. Only the eyes remained. It was always the eyes that let Nathaniel down in oil.

He selected a brush and removed a loose hair. Was about to put paint to canvas when he felt his arms tingle, the strange sixth sense of solitude retreating. He looked over his shoulder. Sure enough a servant stood behind him. Agitation bristled.

‘For goodness sake, man,’ said Nathaniel. ‘Don’t sneak up like that.

If there’s something you’d like to say, come, stand before me and say it.

There’s no need, surely, for such stealth.’

‘Lady Mountrachet sends advice that luncheon is to be served early, sir. The carriage for Tremayne Hall will depart at two o’clock this afternoon.’

Nathaniel cursed silently. He had forgotten about Tremayne Hall.

Yet another of Adeline’s wealthy friends looking to dress their walls in their own image. Perhaps, if he were very lucky, his subject would insist he also feature her three tiny dogs!

To think he had once been thrilled by such introductions, had felt his status rising like the sail on a new ship. He had been a blind fool, ignorant to the cost that such success would claim. His commissions had grown, but his creativity had been reduced commensurately. He was pumping out portraits just as surely as one of the new mass-production factories of which men in business were always speaking, rubbing their shiny hands together with glee. No time to pause, to improve, to vary his method. His work was not that of a craftsman, there was no longer dignity or humanity in his strokes.

Worst of all, while he was busy producing portraits, the time for sketching, his true passion, was slipping through his fingers. Since arriving at Blackhurst he had managed only one panel sketch and a 360

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