The Rose Garden (31 page)

That whole week was horrible. My emotions stayed close to the surface, and I had to concentrate hard to not vent them at every small irritant. Susan had noticed I wasn’t myself, but I heard her explaining to Mark it was likely a mixture of grief and fatigue.

She was right.

Her solution was, too. She kept giving me things I could do round the tearoom, unchallenging tasks that would keep my mind busy without really needing much effort. I wiped down the newly bought tables and set them at just the right angle and clipped on the tablecloths, placing a bud vase for one single rose at the centre. I sent all the glasses and cups through the new built-in dishwasher, stacking them clean in their place on the shelves.

Wednesday morning I sat with Felicity, folding the menus.

She was, if it were possible, more quiet and absorbed in thought than me, and since this seemed so foreign to her nature, I was finally stirred to push my own self-pity to the side enough to ask, ‘Are you all right?’

‘What?’ Glancing up, she said, ‘Oh, yes, I’m fine.’ She focused on the menu’s fold. ‘I’m really fine.’

She wasn’t, though. Her hands shook very slightly and I recognized the barest hint of puffiness around her eyes. She had been crying.

When the door swung open at our backs Felicity looked swiftly up, face wary and yet hopeful, then her eyes dulled. ‘Hello, Paul,’ she told the plumber.

‘What’s the problem?’ he asked cheerfully, his muscled shoulders and broad chest set off to good advantage in a black T-shirt this morning. In his fitted jeans and work boots, with his handsome face, he looked like the embodiment of most young women’s fantasies, and yet it seemed Felicity could barely spare a glance for him as she explained the difficulties Susan had been having with the sinks.

She clearly was preoccupied with something—or with someone—and I had a good idea what. And whom.

***

I found Mark working in the field. The weather had been dry this week and he’d been busy T-budding the root stock that he’d planted this past spring.

Budding was a learned skill and not everyone could do it as efficiently as Mark could. Moving doggedly along the rows of plants, he bent at each to make a shallow T-shaped cut above the root, and into that he tucked a single bud stripped from the stem of the variety of rose he wanted this one to become. Protected by a rubber patch, the tiny grafted bud would hopefully begin to take by autumn, and lie dormant through the winter months until Mark came next February with his shears to prune the whole plant back to just above the bud.

From that new stump, the bud would grow and flourish, and become a rose as lovely as the ones that were now blooming in the next field over. Some things only needed time to find their proper footing. Time and patience. Others, sometimes, needed a swift kick.

Mark glanced up as I came across the field towards him, and he gave a nod but didn’t break the rhythm of his work.

‘What did you do,’ I asked him bluntly, ‘to Felicity?’

He’d been treading lightly round me all week long, uncertain of my mood, and when he looked up now I read the caution in his gaze. ‘What did she say I did?’

I told him, ‘Nothing.’

‘Ah.’

‘You made her cry.’

He looked away and took a deeper interest in the plant that he was budding, though his tone remained a shade defensive. ‘All I did was tell her that I didn’t have the time to see an art show with her Saturday, in Falmouth. She had pieces she was showing there, and—’

‘What the hell,’ I asked him, plain, ‘is wrong with you?’

‘I’m sorry?’ Mark had raised his head again, surprised.

‘You heard. You’ve got this lovely, lovely girl who’s totally obsessed with you, and you’re too blind to see it.’

He looked down again and said, so low I nearly didn’t hear it, ‘I’m not blind.’

‘What?’

‘I’m not blind.’ Emphatic, with an edge of rare impatience. ‘I can see she likes me, and for what it’s worth, I like her too.’

‘Then why…?’

‘Is this your business?’

‘No.’ I met his glare head-on. ‘But someone needs to sort it out.’

‘It’s sorted.’

‘I can see that. You’re all angry, and she’s crying, and—’

‘It wouldn’t work.’ He threw the words down with a hard finality that left no space for argument, but my emotions were already raw and I was in a mood to argue.

‘Why is that?’

‘Because Felicity’s an artist.’

‘And?’

‘She needs her freedom,’ he explained. ‘Like Claire.’ Then, seeing I was looking unenlightened, he went on, ‘When I was young, Claire used to go away for days, for weeks sometimes, to do her work. She’d up and take her canvases and off she’d go. She still does, every now and then.’ He raked the hair back from his face, a gesture of control. ‘I used to hate it, waking up to find she’d gone. Some men can live like that. My father could. I can’t.’

‘Felicity’s not Claire,’ I said.

‘Felicity’s a butterfly.’ Unmoved, he pointed out, ‘She’s barely been down here a couple of years, who knows when she’ll be off again.’

I had known Mark long enough to know his body language, and from how he held himself I knew his inner conflict was a real one, but the memory of Felicity’s sad eyes spurred me to say, ‘Your famous theory, yes. The butterflies. There’s just one little problem with it.’

‘Is there, really?’ Mark was probably as close as I had ever seen him to the loss of his own temper, but he held it in. ‘And what would that be?’

‘It’s all crap, that’s what.’

‘And you would know.’

My own pain tumbled over then. ‘I know that life’s too short to live by stupid theories,’ I shot back. ‘I know that if you have the luck to find someone who loves you, then you love them back, you don’t care on what terms.’ I used the phrase of Daniel’s though it hurt my heart to say it, and because I drew some strength from just remembering those words I carried on, ‘Whatever time you have with somebody who loves you, Mark, it should be…’ Something caught hard in my throat and made me pause to fight it.

Still defiant, Mark asked, ‘Should be what?’

I got the words out somehow, just above a whisper. ‘Time enough.’

And then I turned, because I didn’t want to argue anymore. Before I’d gone ten steps he called out, ‘Eva?’

I glanced back. I’d never seen Mark looking so torn up inside.

‘Love isn’t everything,’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘It is, you know. It’s all that matters, and I hate to see you throwing it away.’

I left him standing there, to think on that.

***

I’d been purposely avoiding picking up Jack’s memoirs since I’d come back, even though the book still sat with patience on my bedside table, bookmarked to the place where I’d left off.

I’d read beyond that now, of course, that day I’d spent aboard the
Sally
, so there really was no harm in reading what I knew already. But I wasn’t too keen anymore to learn what happened next.

It was only now, with what I’d said to Mark still nudging gently at my conscience, that I drew the curtains closed against the light of afternoon and curled up fully clothed upon my bed and reached my hand out for the memoirs.

I could always stop, I told myself. I didn’t have to go beyond what I’d already experienced. It would be enough to feel this closeness for a while, not just to Daniel but to Fergal too, and Jack, whose voice came through the printed pages as though he himself were telling me the stories.

While I read I could imagine that the walls around me were those other walls, the bed a larger bed with posts and curtains, and the room beside me not an empty one but home to an inhabitant who paced the floorboards restlessly on booted feet.

When I approached the place where the pages I’d been reading on the
Sally
had gone blank I read more carefully, prepared to put the book down. There it was—the bit that I’d read last, continued over to the facing page, and then…

I stopped, confused.

Because there was no more beyond that. Nothing written by Jack’s hand, at any rate, although the person who had edited the memoirs had inserted this parenthesized apology:

Jack Butler’s own account ends here. What follows is the Reverend Mr. Simon’s learned lecture on the usefulness of this account in teaching moral lessons to those young men who are tempted to pursue the ways of decadence, for let them be reminded that Jack Butler, having turned his back on both his earthly king and on that other King who rules all men, did thus commit himself to suffer an untimely end; and such an end as does befit a traitor to the Crown, for it was on the very first great anniversary of the accession to the throne of that good King George the First, whom he did so despise and seek to overthrow, that he did chance to fall afoul of the lawmen of Polgelly, and while fleeing from their constable was killed by one sure pistol shot and sent thus in disgrace before his Maker.

‘No.’

I didn’t know I’d spoken till I heard my own voice echo in the silent room, but even as the echo died I knew it didn’t matter.

Daniel had been right. The words were written there already, printed long before my birth, and there was no amount of wishing that could change them.

***

‘Hard luck,’ was Oliver’s opinion of the way Jack Butler met his end. Head tilted, he tried to remember his history. ‘If it happened on the anniversary of King George’s accession to the throne, then that would mean he died in…’

‘August. August 1st, to be exact,’ I said. ‘I looked it up.’

‘Ah.’ Leaning on the corner of the desk in Uncle George’s study, Oliver angled a penetrating look down at me while I worked. It was Saturday, and he’d come up to help with cleaning windows at the greenhouse in advance of next week’s opening, but somehow he had found his way in here instead. I didn’t mind. His company was welcome in my current mood.

He said, ‘You’ve really taken this to heart, haven’t you? Maybe I shouldn’t have found you that book.’

I couldn’t reveal why the knowledge of Jack’s death depressed me as much as it did. All I said was, ‘It just seems unfair, his being killed like that.’

‘Come have lunch,’ he suggested.

‘I can’t. I’ve got this press release to finish.’ Searching through the papers at the side of my computer, I let out a tight sigh of frustration. ‘If I ever find my proper notes. You don’t remember, offhand, what the name of that big prize was that Trelowarth won back in the 1960s, do you?’

‘Sorry, no. Mark would know it, but he won’t be back till late tonight.’

I glanced up. ‘Back from where?’

‘From Falmouth. He and Fee are at the art show.’

‘Mark went with her?’ I stared at him. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘that’s the first time I’ve seen you smile all day.’

‘Is it? Sorry. I’ve just been a little out of sorts, that’s all.’

‘Susan might know what the name of the prize was,’ he said. ‘I’ll go ask her. I ought to be out at the greenhouse now anyway.’ Straightening, he told me, ‘Sue will be happy, at least, with the way your Jack Butler died. Adds a bit of drama to her story of the smugglers for the tourists. Just as well, because I still can’t find anything to tie the Duke of Ormonde and his Jacobite rebellion to this area. Mind you,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t much of a rebellion to begin with. Never really got off the ground. The Duke of Ormonde buggered off to France before it happened. He knew Parliament had voted to impeach him and he didn’t wait around to be arrested.’

I couldn’t really blame him, and I said as much. And then I asked, more slowly, ‘Did he go to Spain afterwards?’

‘He did, yeah. Why?’

‘I just wondered.’ I wondered, too, whether he’d brought any kinsmen along on the voyage, to help raise support for the Jacobite cause.

Oliver remarked that, when people like the Duke of Ormonde fell, they landed firmly on their feet. ‘And they always choose warm places for their exiles. Spanish women, Spanish wine, I’m sure it wasn’t any hardship. It was those he left behind him here in Cornwall did the suffering.’

I didn’t really want to ask him, but I had to. ‘Why? What happened to them?’

‘Well, they were arrested, weren’t they? King George learned what they were up to, and he had them rounded up before they had a chance to rise. They had to watch King James land up in Scotland, watch him lose his battle, couldn’t do a thing to help him. Some were executed, afterwards, and some transported to the colonies, and—’ He broke off, looking at me. ‘You all right?’

‘I’m fine.’ I schooled my face and looked away. ‘You said King George found out what they were planning. How?’

‘The Duke of Ormonde sent his private secretary down here as a messenger—a Scottish colonel, can’t recall his name. McSomething anyway.’

‘Maclean.’

I could have told him that the man had used the alias of Wilson, could have told him what he’d looked like, that he’d worn a dark green coat and powdered wig and high black boots, and that his horse had been a grey. I could have told him that Jack Butler hadn’t liked him much; that Jack had nearly lost his life in going to St Non’s to make enquiries as to Wilson’s true identity, and that he’d learned that Wilson’s name was actually Maclean. I’d been there when Jack had told us that, when Daniel had assured him that Maclean was ‘indisputably’ a man to trust. The Duke of Ormonde’s secretary.

Oliver nodded. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Colonel Maclean. He came down to Cornwall and met all the people preparing to fight on the side of the Jacobites, and then… hang on.’ His mobile was ringing. He took it out to check the number while I looked away, and just for an instant I saw in my mind’s eye a man in a dark green coat standing in the stable yard with Daniel, the both of them laughing and shaking hands.

Oliver put his phone back in his pocket.

‘And then?’ I made the prompt quietly.

‘Then he betrayed them,’ was Oliver’s answer. ‘He knew all the names of the people he’d met, and he gave every one of them right to King George.’

***

It wasn’t the knowledge itself that was hardest to bear, it was knowing that I could do nothing about it, that even with all that I knew I was powerless. Useless.