The Rose Garden (16 page)

Mark and Claire were in the kitchen when I went downstairs. Claire glanced around as I came in and said, ‘Got back all right, did you? Oliver telephoned. Something about an old book he found down in his archives that mentions a smuggler who lived at Trelowarth.’

‘Really?’ I felt a small charge of excitement. ‘That was quick.’

‘You’re to meet him at one, if you’re interested. He said he thought it was well worth a lunch.’

Mark said, ‘That’s the line he’s using these days, is it?’ With a grin he reached to take an orange from the basket on the worktop and began to peel it. ‘Good one.’

‘Give it up. He’s helping me do research.’

‘Oh, I’m sure he is.’ He tried to school his features. ‘And you’re sticking to your story, are you, that you spent last night at Claire’s?’

I looked to her for confirmation. ‘Claire?’

But she was smiling. ‘Just ignore him, Eva,’ she advised, and crossed between the both of us to fill a glass with water at the sink. ‘He knows full well you were with me. I rang him up to let him know.’

‘And a good thing she did,’ Mark said. ‘I was beginning to think you’d gone the way of the Grey Lady. Though it’s not really proof, is it, Claire only
saying
you were with her…’

I interrupted, disregarding that last bit to ask him, ‘Who’s the Grey Lady?’

‘You know. The one who vanished at Trelowarth. Have you never heard about her?’

‘No.’ I had the sudden feeling I was standing in a draught. I moved and asked him, ‘When was this?’

He turned to Claire. ‘When was it? You’re the one who knows the story.’

She considered. ‘Oh, before my parents’ time. I had the story told me when I first came to Trelowarth by an old man in the village who was nearly ninety then, at least, and he had been a young man when it happened. He’d seen it with his own eyes, so he said.’

‘What did he see?’ I had the strange sense that I knew what was coming.

‘He saw a woman disappear.’ She said it very plainly, as though such a thing were possible. ‘Right here, behind the house. A woman he knew well. He said one minute they were talking, and the next she went all grey and then just faded into nothingness and disappeared.’

The draught returned.

Mark saw me shiver and said, ‘It’s a story, Eva. People don’t just disappear.’ He split the orange into sections, offering a piece to me.

I took it. Forced a smile. ‘I’m only thinking it might be another tale to tell the tourists, that’s all.’

‘Why don’t you ask Oliver?’ he said, his eyes all innocence. ‘He’s good with local history.’

Claire told him, ‘Actually, I’d think it would be more the sort of question that you’d want to ask Felicity.’

‘Why Felicity?’

‘Well, she’s keen on ghosts and folklore. She’ll be in the shop today, Eva, if you’re going down to Polgelly. You ought to stop in for a chat.’

I had hit on a better idea. ‘Why don’t we all go? We could have fish and chips at the harbor.’

Claire shook her head. ‘Susan and I have to go shop for tables and chairs,’ she said, then went on in an offhand way, ‘but Mark will come, I’m sure. He’s always up for fish and chips.’ I saw the glance Claire sent her stepson and I knew that she, like me, had noticed Felicity’s feelings for Mark, even if he hadn’t, and was trying to play matchmaker.

He fell for it. ‘All right. I’ve got some work I need to finish first, though,’ he said dryly, ‘on my blog.’

I smiled. ‘Why don’t I go ahead, then? I’ve got banking that I need to do, and I’ll collect Felicity and Oliver, and you can meet us at the harbor. One o’clock?’

With that agreed, I headed out. I wasn’t sure that I was really up to lunching in Polgelly, since I wasn’t quite myself yet and a part of me just wanted to lie down and rest, to find my balance and restore it after all my traveling through time. But overriding my exhaustion was the lure of learning more about the Butler brothers from the book that Oliver had found.

And I did have a bit of business to attend to at the bank. If I surprised Mr. Rowe with my request to put a trust in place, in secret, for Trelowarth, he was too much the professional to let it show. Of course, he said, it could be done. It would take time, preparing all the paperwork and seeing to the finer points, but yes, it was quite possible. And with those wheels set spinning into motion, I moved on to my next stop.

Felicity had customers. I waited by the shelves that held the little dancing pisky figures, picking up the nearest one and weighing it within my hand until she had the time to come across and say hello.

‘You want to watch those,’ she advised me. ‘Tricky things, those piskies.’

With their pointed hats and elf-like clothes and laughing eyes they looked completely harmless, but I knew the tales of piskies and their mischief. ‘I’ll be careful. What is this?’ I asked, and pointed to a little sign among them with the words, ‘Porthallow Green’ carved on it.

‘Don’t you know that story? Well, you know Porthallow, surely? And according to the legend there was once a boy from there sent on an errand by his master, and it was dark before he’d finished and on his way home he heard a voice at the roadside say, “I’m for Porthallow Green.” And the boy thought, well, it might be good to have a bit of company, even from a stranger, so he called out, “
I’m
for Porthallow Green,” and quick as a wink, there he was, on Porthallow Green, with the piskies dancing round him. Have you really never heard this one?’

I told her that I hadn’t.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘one of the piskies called out, “I’m for Seaton Beach!” and the boy thought,
well, why not
? So he said, “
I’m
for Seaton Beach,” and there he was, with the piskies again. And they went on like that all night, all the way to the King of France’s cellar, where they drank his wine and danced, and when the piskies brought the boy home in the morning to Porthallow Green, he still had his wine glass to prove it.’ She smiled. ‘Wouldn’t happen today, of course. Think of the airfare I’d save if I could go and stand in a meadow and simply call, “I’m for Ibiza”, and land on the beach.’

‘But you’d have to rely on the piskies to bring you back home again,’ I pointed out. ‘They don’t always.’

‘True enough.’

I asked casually, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of anybody disappearing from Trelowarth?’

As it turned out, she had never heard the story of the Grey Lady. ‘When was that, do you know?’

I did the math. ‘Claire said she heard it when she first came here to live, which would be nearly thirty years ago, and the man she heard it from was maybe ninety, so assume that he was twenty-five or thirty when it happened… ninety years ago?’ I estimated. ‘Give or take.’

‘I’ll have to ask around,’ she said, ‘but nothing would surprise me. You know Trelowarth’s built right on a ley line?’

‘A what?’

‘Ley line. Sort of a geomagnetic conduit, if you like. A lot of ancient monuments and holy sites were built on top of ley lines. There’s a line that runs clear under St Non’s well and through the Beacon and Trelowarth to Cresselly Pool.’ She laughed at my expression. ‘I’m not making it up, honestly. Dowsers can find them, they’re actually there. They’ve a powerful energy. All sorts of strange things can happen on ley lines.’

I certainly wasn’t in any position to argue that, I thought. As I set my pisky back among his dancing brethren on the shelf, Felicity asked brightly, ‘So, what are you doing down here in Polgelly?’

I turned and told her, ‘Taking you to lunch.’

***

The tide was in, the wind was fair, and many of the fishing boats had gone to take advantage of the day, to ride the sea beneath a sun that warmed my shoulders even through the fabric of my shirt and felt like summer’s kiss upon my upturned face.

I felt another happy moment of nostalgia, sitting on the whitewashed harbor wall enjoying fish and chips that had been wrapped in newspaper, the old way I remembered it. The rest was well remembered too: the biting tang of vinegar, the sharpness of the salt, the sound of seagulls wheeling greedily above me while the water lapped the wall below and, farther off, the waves that crashed in rhythm at the entrance to the harbor and cast up a spray that carried on the breeze to cool my skin.

Felicity, beside me, smiled. ‘You look as though you’ve eaten the canary.’

Mark said, ‘That’ll be next, at the rate she’s going. Where are you putting it all, Eva?’

‘I’m hungry.’

‘You can chase that with a pound of fudge,’ suggested Oliver, who in this group had fallen very naturally back into his old childhood pattern, teasing me to focus my attention where he wanted it—on him.

Not that he had seemed at all put out that I’d brought Mark nor that Felicity had joined us. Oliver, as I recalled, was nothing if not sociable, and with his easygoing ways he could adapt without complaint to any change of plan. But he was not about to let that steer him off his course or change his purpose.

It was clear he had his eye on me. I noticed it today more than I had at our last lunch together, noticed how he looked at me and how his smiles lingered. And a month ago I might have even welcomed the attention. After all, he was a nice guy and looked absolutely gorgeous in his plain white shirt and jeans, his blond hair golden in the midday sun and tousled by the harbor breeze. I knew most women would have thought him wonderful if they’d been in my place.

But when I looked at him today my only thought was that his face, though handsome, didn’t have the same appeal as Daniel Butler’s, and that Daniel’s eyes in that same light would have been even greener than the sea beyond the shore.

I shrugged off Oliver’s remark and smiled. ‘I doubt that I’ll have room for fudge when I’m done with this.’

‘If I take you for a walk, you will.’

Mark said, ‘I thought you called her down to see a book.’

‘I did. Only found it this morning. It came in a box with some others I bought at a sale last year, and it’s been gathering dust at the back of my bookshelves.’

Felicity glanced over, curious. ‘What sort of book?’

‘A field guide of sorts to this area—natural history with small bits of color thrown in—but it mentions some people that Eva’s been after. She’s trying to find Susan somebody famous who lived at Trelowarth,’ he said, ‘and these brothers, the Butlers, were smugglers. Infamous, not famous, but the local people loved them, so the book says. They were heroes here.’

Mark said, ‘Like the Carter brothers up at Prussia Cove?’

‘Exactly. But the Carters weren’t in business till years afterward. They weren’t even born when the Butlers were free-trading out of Polgelly.’ He’d finished the last of his chips and he crumpled the wrapping of newspaper into a ball. ‘I have to thank Eva for putting me on to them. I’d never heard of the Butlers, myself.’

Felicity was looking at him with the keen eyes of an old friend who would not be fooled. ‘I’m surprised you found the book at all,’ she said innocently, ‘if it was at the back of your bookshelves.’

‘Yeah, well, Eva asked me yesterday about the Butlers, and I had some time last night, so I just thought I’d look. You know.’

She smiled at him. ‘Oh yes. I know.’

‘Shut up.’ Their banter had the easy back and forth that came with practice. ‘Shouldn’t you be getting back to work?’

‘I’ve got five minutes, still. And I was hoping to take one of you big strong men back to the shop with me. I’ve just had an artist ship over her paintings—they’re huge, and I’ll need help to hang them.’

Oliver was unenthusiastic. ‘Mark’s got bigger muscles. And while you’re off doing that,’ he said, ‘I’ll show the book to Eva.’

Which was clearly what Felicity had wanted to begin with.

I watched them go. ‘She’s fun.’

‘She is that.’ His gaze moved to me as he said, ‘That was nicely maneuvered.’

‘What was?’

‘Your inviting Fee out to have lunch with us. And with Mark. You’ve noticed she’s head over heels for him.’

The fact that
he’d
noticed surprised me at first, till I realized he worked with Felicity and they were obviously close. ‘Yes, well,’ I told him, ‘I didn’t do
all
the maneuvering, did I?’

He grinned. ‘I’ve done my share of helping hang pictures. And Mark’s muscles really are bigger. Besides, how do you know I wasn’t maneuvering for my own benefit?’

I ate my last chip and wadded the paper with careful hands. ‘Oliver…’

‘What?’

‘I do like you.’

‘But?’

‘I just don’t want you to think that I’m… that is, I’m really not looking for…’

‘Hey.’ I could hear the faint smile in his voice. ‘It’s a book, not an etching.’ He rose to his feet from the harbor wall, held out his hand for the newspaper. ‘Come on, let me chuck that in the bin for you, then you can come and look at what I’ve found.’

I wasn’t fooled. He still had an agenda, but I knew there wasn’t a thing I could do to discourage him. Men who had Oliver’s confidence weren’t to be swayed by small things like the fact I had fallen for somebody else.

I formed that thought idly enough, but it struck me with a sudden force that stopped me in my tracks. I couldn’t honestly have meant that, could I? Yet I sat here in the sunshine on the harbor wall and turned the thought a thousand ways, and every way I turned it, it was true.

Oliver, who had no way of knowing that I’d just been hit by something like a thunderbolt, asked whether I was ready and I numbly told him yes, I was, and went to see the book.

He’d left it set out for me on the small working desk beside the bookshelves in the storage room of the museum, in the back beside the little kitchenette that had a kettle and some cupboards and a sink, and not much more.

The storage room itself was crowded thick with shelves and boxes, and it smelt of dust that hadn’t been disturbed in quite some time. Still, there was proper light to read by, and an antique wooden captain’s chair that proved to be quite comfortable.

Collecting my still-rattled thoughts, I focused my attention on the book itself.

It was an older book, with cloth-and-cardboard covers frayed and dented at the edges and the binding at the spine so badly cracked and worn that whole sections of pages, stitched together, slid and shifted when I leafed my way along to find the place that Oliver had marked.