Eden's Garden (19 page)

‘Yes.’ Rhiannon rearranged cups and saucers on a tray, even though they had been perfectly neat in the first place. ‘To be honest,’ she said at last, ‘when I was first here, I’d have put Eden on the market myself, given the chance.’

‘Really?’ Carys felt her eyes widen.

Rhiannon’s gaze was far away. ‘Life seemed so short, at that age. There was so much I wanted to do. A career. Marriage. Children.’

‘Marriage.’ Carys looked at her. How self-absorbed children are, she thought. Even more when they are teenagers. Rhiannon had always been Rhiannon. Even now, it had never crossed her mind that Rhiannon had once had a life that had nothing to do with Eden.

A memory stirred. She had come down from the old nursery one snowy afternoon, on a mission to get supplies for the video cassette marathon of the
Star Wars
trilogy, given to Huw for Christmas that year. She had found Rhiannon, sitting in the dusk, her hands that were never still resting silently in front of her. She hadn’t stayed, she remembered. She hadn’t even let Rhiannon know she was there. She had run back to the safety of the ice-cold rebel planet of Hoth empty-handed, glad to find David and Huw too absorbed in Luke Skywalker’s light sabre to notice her failure. But the sadness had remained with her: a forlorn sadness, more frightening than tears, that finally, after all these years, made sense.

‘There was someone,’ she said. Rhiannon looked up, slightly startled. ‘Sorry,’ said Carys. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’

‘That’s okay.’ A faint smile appeared on Rhiannon’s face. ‘There never was much that could be hidden from you, Carys,
bach
.’

‘Yes, there was,’ muttered Carys. ‘There still is, come to that,’ she added under her breath.

‘And of course you’re right,’ said Rhiannon. ‘There
was
someone. One of my tutors at art college in London, as it happens. He’d won a major prize for his work that year and had the offer of going to work in New York. Fame and fortune beckoned. He’d just asked me to go with him, when the news came through about Paul and Marianne.’

‘Oh,’ said Carys. A vision of Joe, his face filled with hurt and disappointment floated in front of her eyes. And hadn’t he, with his offer of the holiday cottage in the country, at least tried to compromise? ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Oh, don’t be.’ Rhiannon looked up. ‘It took me years, but after a while I realised going with him would have been the worst mistake of my life.’

‘The worst?’

‘Oh yes.’ Rhiannon’s voice was certain. ‘It was the right time for Jason. Not for me. He was much older than me, you see. He knew exactly what he wanted and he’d worked for years to get there. I think I knew at the time – even though I’d never have admitted it to myself – that I would always have lived in his shadow.’ She gave the faintest of smiles. ‘He’s semi-retired now, but still hugely successful. And onto his fifth wife.’

‘Ouch,’ said Carys, without thinking.

‘Quite.’

There was a moment’s silence.

‘Funny thing is,’ said Rhiannon at last, ‘I think maybe even Jason can see it now.’

‘Oh?’

‘Not that I’ve spoken to him. But he sent a message through the publishers of that book I illustrated, giving me details of an artist-in-residence post in an American college. Apparently they’re keen on having someone from the UK. The publishers forwarded another email from him a few days ago, asking if I’d put in my application yet and offering to give me a letter of recommendation, if I applied.’

‘Wow.’ Carys was impressed. ‘And he’s mega-famous? That’s amazing.’

‘I suppose it is,’ said Rhiannon.

Carys frowned at her. ‘People would kill for contacts like that. Which means you’ve got to apply.’

‘It would mean leaving here.’

‘Oh.’ Carys hesitated. ‘But if Plas Eden is being sold, anyhow …’

‘I know.’ Rhiannon turned away to fiddle with something in the sink. ‘It just feels a big step, that’s all.’

Rhiannon was still hoping David would stick it out, find a way through and keep Plas Eden, thought Carys. She probably hadn’t told David about the application at all.

‘How long is it for?’ she asked.

Rhiannon turned back, a collection of newly washed teaspoons in her hand. ‘Six months. Initially, that is. Part of the brief is to set up a permanent exchange with a college over here. So it could mean a lot of travelling.’

‘But it doesn’t have to be forever. Something like that could lead to all sorts of things. It would give you so many openings. So many choices. Even if you only do it for a year, or even a couple of years. Any decision about Eden might take months, years even. You can’t miss an opportunity like that.’

Rhiannon smiled. ‘It is tempting. And, to be honest, I suppose I feel ready for it now. When I was younger, I thought that life was so short.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘Well, yes it is, in one way. And especially if you are a woman and desperately trying to cram in everything before you are forty-five and suddenly become invisible, as if you don’t matter any more.’ She grimaced. ‘It wasn’t until I hit forty myself that I realised it doesn’t have to be that way. Life doesn’t just stop when you have children, or when they grow up. As far as I can see, many women nowadays only start their careers later in life, when their responsibilities are at least lessened.’

‘I suppose,’ said Carys, slightly dubiously. That seemed an awful long time to wait, from where she was sitting.

‘And if you think about it, these days I might be only halfway through my life. That’s a long time. To be honest, I was exceedingly boring when I was twenty: self-obsessed, arrogant, and about as shallow as can be. Although I say it myself, I’m much more interesting now. And freer.’ She gave a mischievous grin. ‘It doesn’t half sort the men from the boys, having a fifty-something face, I can tell you. The boys – whatever age they are – try to pretend you don’t exist, because really you scare them witless. So you can forget about them, for starters.’

Carys eyed her, not entirely sure if she was being serious or not. ‘And the men?’

‘The men.’ Rhiannon smiled. ‘Real men never see just youth or age. They see the human being that was always there.’ Her eyes ran fondly round the old kitchen. ‘I learnt so much, being here in Eden. If I’m honest, I had a bit of a talent, and little else, when I came here. All the experiences I’ve had in my life, these are the things that give me real passion for my work. So it was no longer about my ego, and being admired and famous. I suppose you could say this is where my painting really began.’ Her eyes focused as they rested on the shadow of the doorframe, and she straightened up, abruptly. Carys turned instinctively in the same direction.

‘David!’ A look of pure pleasure had come over Rhiannon’s face. ‘You made it, after all.’

‘I managed to get the next train,’ muttered David, sounding more than a little embarrassed. Almost like a man who had changed his mind at the last minute and wasn’t about to confess it. ‘I came in through the garden. Angela said you were in here. I thought you might like some help.’

‘We’re fine,’ replied Rhiannon. ‘Although you can certainly help to carry things out, if you like.’

‘Okay,’ he said, stepping into the kitchen. ‘Hi, Carys.’

Her eyes met his, briefly. They were as blue and clear as she remembered, with that tinge of brown around each iris that always sent her stomach into full kamikaze dive. Time, she discovered, had not changed the kamikaze part. Not one little bit.

‘Hi.’ Her mind had gone blank. Her insides had just squelched themselves into tight knots. Frantically, Carys searched around for something to say. Something calm, cool, collected and polite. It was all she could do to breathe.

David reached hastily for the nearest tray of sandwiches. ‘I’ll take this one, shall I?’

‘That’ll be great,’ smiled Rhiannon, as if she hadn’t in the least noticed the abrupt silence hanging in the air. ‘Smells as if the flans are cooked,’ she added to Carys, as David vanished as fast as his damaged leg could take him. ‘I’ve kept to the mostly unadventurous, I’m afraid. I thought your mam might prefer it that way.’

‘Thanks,’ muttered Carys, retrieving plates from the draining board to give her face a chance to cool down a little and her heart rate time to get back to something near normal. ‘I’ll make another pot of tea, shall I?’

Okay; so they could get through tea and the showing of photographs, and then go home, and it would all be over and done with. She would never have to venture within the grounds of Plas Eden, or speak to a Meredith, ever again. And the past could remain where it belonged: buried forever, without trace.

 The meal on the terrace was, in the end, an unexpectedly cheerful affair.

Getting out and about, Carys could see, was doing Mam no end of good, despite her slight panic beforehand, and her tendency to drop off to sleep at any significant lull in the conversation. But in between, her eyes had regained much of their old brightness. Even her mind seemed to be recovering from its institutionalised dependence on others and was up and running again.

‘Maybe I could try and come to the café,’ she admitted, as they finally reached the stage of cake and leisurely cheese and biscuits. ‘And bring the photographs. Although I expect they’ve got lots of them already.’

‘Not like yours,’ Gwynfor assured her, eyebrows on alert. ‘There aren’t many of Eden itself. At least, not of the servants. There are plenty of the family, of course.’

‘Really?’ said Carys, looking up from the crumbs of cake she was chasing absently round her plate. She didn’t remember photographs from the time she came regularly to Eden. But then, when you came to think about it, you wouldn’t. Not with the past, hanging there in each silent corner of the room. Not when it was still so raw and painful. Photographs, in those days, were the last thing that were needed. She carefully avoided David’s eyes. Which, since he had spent the last hour or so carefully avoiding hers, was no big deal.

‘Well, not plenty, exactly. But a few,’ Gwynfor corrected himself. He smiled encouragingly at Mair. ‘Although I have to say – present company excepted – I find those of the servants considerably more interesting.’

‘Oh!’ Mam looked slightly bemused at this. ‘Well, I suppose there were some characters in Pont-ar-Eden, in those days.’

‘And not just in those days,’ smiled Gwynfor, eying her over his thin-framed reading glasses, in true professor style.

Laughter went up around the table. Hodge, who was sitting at Carys’ feet, on the principle of having tried everyone else for the odd sandwich or three that might go missing in action under the table, looked up in alarm. Human laughter and human tears, being almost indistinguishable at times, always unnerved him slightly. And especially when there was more than one human in need of his comfort and general sympathy, which left a dog uncertain of where to start.

‘You’re okay, Hodge,’ said Carys, spotting his dilemma, and massaging the nearest ear. Hodge forgot the comforting and went on full cheese-morsel alert. Things were looking up at last.

‘Leave Carys alone, greedy,’ David said, who seemed to have become aware of this performance, despite not looking in their direction. ‘You know the rules: no food from the table.’

Hodge gave a deep sigh and settled down again. Not too far from Carys’ chair. Just in case. Carys found herself smiling at his antics. She looked up, just in time to discover David watching her.

‘Labrador,’ he remarked, as if to cover the fact of him looking at all. ‘Stomachs-R-Us.’

Carys laughed. ‘I remember.’

‘Ah, yes. Nainie and her labradors,’ he replied, with just the faintest of smiles. His eyes held hers for a moment, then looked away.

She looked older. A woman with defined cheekbones and a wide, expressive mouth, rather than the gentle, round-faced girl he remembered. It was a lived-in face; one browned by sun and weather and moulded over the years by experiences he had not been there to share, and would probably never hear of. She was older and sadder, with unmistakeable lines of strain at the corner of her eyes. But she was still Carys.

David discovered the old hurt, that he had managed to keep up as a barrier from even thinking about her over the years, had eased a little. ‘May I see these photographs?’ he asked.

‘Of course you can.’ Carys pulled out the plastic folder, where it had been placed out of harm’s way on a bench along the house wall. ‘There are others at home.’

Including the one of the woman and child. It still sat, in a folder all of its own, amongst her socks in her bedroom at Willow Cottage. She hadn’t even shown it to Mam, yet. The more she looked at it, the more there was about the woman’s face that unnerved her, with its lines of a life of fierce emotion, and mouth that – even in a smile – was a line of utter determination.

‘That’s the cottage,’ said David, his surprise breaking in on her thoughts.

‘Cottage?’ Huw, who had kept himself a little apart from the conversation, as if so much tittle-tattle was beneath his notice, looked up from slicing a particularly fine Caernarfon brie.

‘Eden Farm.’ David pushed the photograph towards his brother. ‘Funny; we were just discussing that.’

‘Pity,’ muttered Huw, a crease of annoyance appearing between his brows. ‘If you’d given the Sullivans notice straight after your accident, when I suggested, Beddows might have considered taking it as part of the estate. As it is, they’re not interested.’

‘That wasn’t why we were discussing it.’ David scowled at Huw, who seemed to have conveniently forgotten that the conversation as they’d made their way up the drive had centred around Eden Farm being a far more suitable home for Rhiannon than a cottage in Pont-ar-Eden, and the least they could do. Since Huw would have equal rights if it came to a sale of the estate, nothing could be done without his agreement. Huw, it appeared, was not about to agree. At least not without a fight.

And just how long had his brother been in discussions with Beddows? David asked himself, grimly. From the moment the call came through from Switzerland to tell Huw and Rhiannon about the accident? Was this an opportunity Huw had been waiting for all these years? No wonder he had been so against a long lease to the Sullivans. David cursed himself. He’d been the fool who’d listened, believing his brother, with all his business acumen, was thinking of a more profitable solution for the farm. Just how naïve can you get?

‘It was such a lovely place,’ came Mair’s voice, breaking into David’s inner beating up of himself. She was nodding and smiling, her eyes misted with memory. ‘That used to be the head gardener’s house, Carys, dear. Where your dad grew up. He took us there to see it once, before the new tenants came in. You could only have been about five or six. I don’t expect you remember.’

‘I remember,’ said Carys, slowly. ‘At least, I’d forgotten I remembered. But I remember.’ She had always thought it a dream, or a place they had visited, that childhood memory of Dad taking her to see a house with yellow roses round the door, rows of fruit and vegetables and the little orchard of wind-blown apple trees, and the arch of peas and beans that led to the tiny, self-contained, walled garden. ‘I thought it was still being run as a farm?’

‘It was.’ Angela was peering closely at the photograph. ‘The last tenants, the Sullivans, were brilliant. They were supplying veg and eggs to quite a few of the houses in Pont-ar-Eden. And to the Boadicea. Didn’t they just move to a place in the Midlands?’

‘Shropshire,’ said Huw. ‘Better growing conditions.’

‘But I bet no walled garden,’ returned Angela, pointedly.

Just for a moment, a flush of discomfort passed over Huw’s solid features. ‘Their choice,’ he muttered.

‘And our loss,’ retorted Angela. ‘Local produce is the in thing at the moment, as well as being more environmentally friendly, and all that. I miss my veg box. Even those squash thingies no one seems to know how to cook.’

‘And Jerusalem artichokes,’ added Rhiannon, with a shudder.

‘Oh, I rather like Jerusalem artichokes,’ said Mam. ‘In moderation, of course.’

‘There, you see,’ said Angela. ‘The Sullivans’ farm was just what is needed in Pont-ar-Eden. I don’t see why you want David to sell it off for a housing estate at all, darling.’

‘Oh!’ said Mam, to whom this was clearly news. Her eyes rested on Huw, who was looking less at ease by the minute.

‘Well, something has to be done,’ he growled defensively. ‘If David had given them the ten-year lease they’d wanted, we’d quite likely have been stuck with the farm, whatever happened in the future. Given the way things have turned out, I was quite right to advise against it.’

‘Nothing has been decided yet,’ put in David. ‘Especially about Eden Farm.’

There was a moment’s silence. ‘Such a pity,’ said Mam, at last. ‘I’d have liked to have seen the old cottage again. Your dad had such happy memories there, Carys, especially of your grandma and granddad. It would have been nice to see it again.’

‘Is it empty at the moment?’ asked Carys. David nodded. ‘Well, in that case, would you mind if Mam and I went over to see it, one day?’

‘That sounds like an excellent idea,’ said David. ‘In fact, Mair, why don’t you let us take you round one day next week?’

Mair beamed. ‘Thank you, dear. You always were a thoughtful boy.’ A sudden sharp gleam appeared in her eyes. ‘But I’m afraid it’ll be a bit too rough for me,
cariad
, especially with that track. You could always take Carys, though, and she could tell me all about it.’

‘Mam!’

‘Well, I don’t see why not, dear. You could take a camera and take pictures for me. That sounds like the best solution.’

‘I’m sure the estate agent could show me round,’ muttered Carys, hoping there was such a thing.

‘No, you’re okay.’ David cleared his throat. ‘I’ll take you there. It’s no problem.’

‘In fact,’ said Angela, who had been watching the two of them closely, ‘why don’t you go now, Carys?’

‘Now?’ Carys blinked. ‘Shouldn’t we be getting back soon? I mean, Mam…’

‘Nonsense, dear. I’m fine,’ said Mam, who was all of a sudden as alert as could be.

‘We can move inside in a bit, if it gets too cold,’ said Rhiannon, who seemed quite unaware of the soft and wistful look that had appeared in Angela’s eyes. ‘We’ve still got Nainie’s chair. It gets nice and warm in Nainie’s old room, and the TV still works.’

‘And we can stay for as long as you like, can’t we, Huw, dear?’ added Angela. To which Huw grunted in the resigned tones of a man who knows his place in the domestic scheme of things. ‘You can take my camera, Carys,’ she added, fishing out an expensive-looking pink metal affair. ‘It’s got an amazing zoom lens, and there’s still lots of memory on the card. I can email you the pictures tonight so you can show Mair straight away.’

‘Sounds like a good plan to me,’ put in Gwynfor, who was still shuffling through the photographs and had missed this little scene entirely. ‘And we’ve got plenty more of these to get through, haven’t we, Mair?’

‘Okay,’ said Carys, feeling decidedly stitched up.

‘I’ll row you across,’ David said, with the abruptness of a man who knows he’ll think better of this, given half a chance to think it over. ‘That’ll be the quickest way.’

This was getting complicated. ‘There’s no need.’

‘It’s fine. I need to pop over and check kids haven’t been lighting fires in the apple orchard again. It’s time to give Hodge a bit of a run anyhow, and he can run for miles over there. Rabbits,’ he added to Hodge, who was already alert and on his feet in readiness at the sound of his own name. The tail banged furiously against the nearest chair leg in appreciation.

Carys looked round at the faces watching her. Apart from Huw and Gwynfor, whose minds were clearly elsewhere, and Rhiannon who was busily tidying plates, each gave her the message that resistance was futile, and might just make her feel even more of a fool than she did at this moment. She willed herself to keep her last shreds of dignity and not blush.

‘Okay,’ she conceded at last, bowing to the inevitable. ‘That sounds great. Thanks, David.’

‘You’re welcome,’ he replied, smiling faintly. Almost as if he were glad the ice had been broken between them. Carys firmly squashed the tendency for her heart to go racing off again. If David could be all grown up about this, then so could she. It was nothing personal: they were both doing this for Mam’s benefit.

‘That’s not Eden.’ She looked round at the sharpness of Gwynfor’s voice. He was peering closely at the little postcard in his hand.

‘Yes, I know,’ she replied, thankful for the distraction. ‘That’s a real puzzle. It was in amongst the others, but I don’t know where it is. Mam didn’t recognise it, either. Did you Mam?’

‘No,’ said Mam, shaking her head.

‘No writing. There isn’t even a stamp on it,’ Gwynfor said, disappointed, as he turned the card over.

‘We used to do that, all the time,’ said Mam. ‘When we were young. Before we could afford a camera. We’d bring postcards back as a reminder, instead.’

‘The writing on the front is really faded,’ said Carys. ‘That’s why I brought the original, rather than a scan. We’ve been trying to make out the name.’

Mam nodded. ‘It starts with “Tre”. And then it’s faded away.’

‘We thought it might have something to do with Trefriw, further north in the Conwy Valley,’ said Carys.

‘Only I don’t remember it at all,’ put in Mam. ‘And there wasn’t a house like that near Conwy or Trefriw, or anywhere I remember as a child. In fact, I don’t remember ever seeing the postcard before. So it must have been one from your dad’s side of the family,’ she added to Carys. ‘And anyhow, it looks as if it ends with an “i”, “c” and a “k”. And then “Hall”. That’s not Welsh.’