Eden's Garden (24 page)

‘Oh.’ They walked on in silence again until they reached Low-Price, where they came to a halt. ‘I’d better go in and get my milk.’ David’s eyes travelled over the small group of hooded youths and scantily clad girls, who appeared to be holding an impromptu party on the bench outside the convenience store. ‘Will you be okay?’ he asked.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she smiled. ‘They’re pretty harmless.’

As a teenager, she’d itched for the freedom of the kids who didn’t have to be in doing their homework, or for the family meal. Funny how you didn’t spot until much later that the kids who roamed the streets unchecked and hung around Low-Price were the ones who, in the end, had the fewest choices of all. At least Mam and Dad had always pushed the three of them. Made sure they had the means to support themselves and made sure they knew they had more choices than to end up with a child to raise before their own life had really started.

‘See you then,’ David muttered awkwardly. There was so much more he wanted to say. But, despite never having been a man who was stuck for words, he now didn’t know where to begin.

Carys fished out her mobile. ‘Give me your number. I’ll ring you back and you’ll have mine. Then I can text you when I know what I’m doing.’ It was her turn to sound awkward. ‘It might not be easy to ring, especially once I get to Chester.’

‘Of course. Here.’ Numbers exchanged, they hesitated a moment, neither of them quite sure what to say again.

‘Good evening!’

Carys turned to find Nesta and Haf trotting down the street in their Sunday best. ‘Hello,’ she replied.

‘Good evening,’ said David, with the hunted look of one who wished nothing more than to dive behind the frozen meals counter in Low-Price until the coast was clear.

‘Lovely evening, isn’t it,’ said Nesta, watching them both with eagle eyes.

‘Going anywhere nice?’ smiled Carys.

‘It’s our scrabble night,’ said Haf, who was clutching a shopping bag bulging with the unmistakable outline of a wine bottle.

‘Best night of the week,’ added Nesta, who was holding a box of German biscuits, hot from the shelves of Lidl on Talarn High Street.

‘Have a good time,’ called Carys, as the sisters set off on their way again, heads suspiciously close together, deep in conversation.

David groaned.

‘Charming,’ said Carys, prepared to see the funny side. ‘Is that all the thanks I get? I’ve just made your reputation as the village Lothario. They’ll be treating you like the real lord of the manor now. I’m the one who’s going to have to spend my days as a low-down hussy.’

‘I’m not the …’

‘Okay. Heathcliff, then.’

He struggled with his dignity for a few moments, but she could see the old familiar twitch of his mouth. ‘Don’t be daft,’ he said. But he was laughing, all the same.

It was the laugh that did it. That warm, rumbling laugh of his when he was trying his best not to. Carys swallowed as her stomach leapt instantly into one of those familiar high-dive somersaults and her toes began to tingle.

Oh no. Definitely not. Not again. Not ever. The last thing she needed was complications – and particularly complications of the David Meredith kind – in her life.

‘See you,’ she said hastily. And with a wave, she was off, careful not to look back once.

This was definitely not the time to prompt any of the old oops-they-only-had-a-double-room wheeze. She wasn’t born yesterday, thank you very much. And, besides, she had a heart to keep safe.

 

Rhiannon sat for a while amongst the statues after David and Carys had gone, until there was scarcely any light left under the trees.

She couldn’t quite get rid of the sense of unease that hung around her. But surely that was only natural, with the recent conversation bringing back memories, and the ring of the doorbell of her London flat all those years ago that had changed her life forever.

The statues seemed closer in the darkness. As if they were gathering around her, stone faces flickering into life. Was that hostile, or sorrowful? She had always been certain of their mood before. But not tonight. A night breeze stirred, sending a sigh of leaves around the little glade. Tonight, she would not have been surprised if a stone hand had appeared on her shoulder, like the commodore in
Don Giovanni
, dragging her down to hell for her sins.

Through the gentle sway of trees the lights of Eden flickered, its shape rising like a ghost through the darkness. Houses were like people, thought Rhiannon: living, evolving beings, formed from their past and always being reformed for their future. And nothing can stay still forever.

‘I’ve changed, too,’ she said aloud, the realisation flooding through her. Her memory of Nainie was still as strong, but now it was the good memories that were surfacing above the painful ones: as if, over the past months, a healing had finally taken place.

She missed her like crazy, of course she did, along with the precious moments when they had giggled together like schoolgirls for no particular reason at all, and even the long hours of listening to the same stories over and over again that, at the time, she had felt would drive her mad.

But at ninety-seven, Hermione Anne had simply had enough. She had lived through most of the twentieth century and seen it turn into the twenty-first. She had outlived her only child and most of her friends. Her hearing was failing, her sight was almost gone, and once she no longer had the energy to potter round the courtyard of an evening sipping her ‘gin and it’ (a lethal combination of gin and dry white Martini, without hide nor hair of tonic water to soften the blow), she didn’t see much point any more.

Much as she loved her, Rhiannon could not wish her back. It would have been like torture to the gentle, delicate woman who had been the centre of Eden from before the Second World War to punk rock and the iron lady. An agony to the woman who, even in her seventies, had wandered her beloved gardens daily, and every evening, sunshine, rain or hail, had taken generations of Labradors up to the rusting iron bench overlooking the bay.

She would not, Rhiannon knew, have missed those final months, not for the world. They might have drained her and left her with a hollow in her heart, but for Hermione Anne it had been a gentle closing down, a pulling of her life around her, like a shawl, closer and closer, until there was a shell that looked like Nainie, but wasn’t her at all.

It had been a time when Rhiannon had seen that nature can have kindnesses as well as cruelty, making her feel she would never be afraid of the fact of death again. It was a time when every brief flicker of the old Hermione Anne had been unbearably precious, urging Rhiannon to take every moment as it happens and not waste a second regretting the past or worrying about the future. And it had been a time when life had been stripped down to its simplest, its most straightforward, when nothing else had mattered outside the easing out of a life well lived.

Rhiannon took a deep breath, steadying herself. Time to let go, she acknowledged. Time to move forward. Nainie would always be with her, as the boys were. As Marianne was. As all the people she had ever known and loved were still alive and with her, and would always be, for as long as she lived.

But now, she finally understood, it was time for her to move on beyond Eden, into wherever life might take her. ‘This is my time,’ she told herself.

Eden’s future was for David to sort out. Rhiannon could feel the responsibility finally falling away from her. She would love Plas Eden until the day she died. But it had already slipped into the part of her life that was memory, along with her life in London and the boys’ childhood. It would never again be the centre of her life.

Her application for the artist in residence in Vermont was still on her computer desktop, unfinished. The closing date for online applications was midnight tonight. With strong coffee and a good dose of adrenalin, she could just about get it in on time.

Rhiannon took a deep breath. Even if she didn’t succeed with this application, she would keep on trying, pushing away at any opportunity that came her way. At her age, an opportunity might only come once. No second chances. If she was going to be serious about this, she needed to focus on the future. Her future. And that meant freeing herself to take up any chance – any sliver of a chance – that came her way.

At her side, Hodge raised his head, a low growl rumbling in his throat.

‘It’s all right.’ Rhiannon bent to stroke his head in reassurance. ‘It’s only Tash.’ A black shadow slunk beneath the statues, leaping up onto the rounded head of the giant and mewing a plaintive greeting.

If David moved from Plas Eden too, heaven knew what would happen to Hodge and the cats, she thought, as she felt Hodge lean himself lovingly against her. But between them, they’d find a way. There had to be some solution that would keep them all safe and contented. Animals, like people, did move, too. Even to the other side of the world. They’d cross that bridge when they came to it.

She gave Hodge’s head a brisk pat. ‘Come on then, you two: let’s get you back and fed.’

Hodge wasn’t one to pass up the allure of dog biscuits topped off by the remains of last night’s stew, but there was the little matter of checking whether this cat really was his cat and not some interloper who needed marching firmly off the premises. Rhiannon waited as he reached up gingerly to touch noses, while Tash graciously bent down from her advantage to return the greeting, claws sheathed.

The darkness was by now almost complete. Rhiannon pressed the button on Hodge’s night-time collar, setting a ring of crimson lights flashing into the blackness. Then she fished out her torch and switched it on. The statues retreated, eyes blank, as she swung the beam around.

Just in case.

‘Come along, Hodge.’ The circle of flashing lights trotted obediently at her side. Up ahead, Tash’s eyes fluoresced in the beam of the torch as she turned to check they were following her lead, tail held high.

Slowly, they made their way up towards the patchwork of lights in the distance, where Eden lay waiting.

 There was a fire burning in the grate. I stood there for a moment, feeling its warmth on my skin in the glow of candles on the mantelpiece.

‘You must be soaked to the skin,’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘Just my coat,’ I murmured, shrugging myself out of the damp sleeves. He took it and draped it over a chair next to the fire, where it steamed gently. My hat was in an equally sad state, dripping water down the back of my neck, so I removed that, too. But not my boots. For all I could feel the rain seeping through my stockings, chilling my feet. My coat I could grasp in a moment, or – at worst – leave without. But not my boots. Not without the first policeman I met arresting me for a vagrant. And the questions that might then be asked.

‘Can I offer you a cup of tea?’ He sounded a little uncertain. As well he might, with an unattended young woman arriving at his door in the middle of the night. I shook my head. ‘A glass of wine, perhaps?’

‘No! Thank you,’ I added, hastily. For all the fire was warm, I could not stay still. I paced the room for a few moments. The hem of my dress and petticoats were heavy with rain and London mud, I could feel their weight slapping hard against my ankles as I walked.

He watched me in silence. Patiently waiting. I could see the faint enquiry on his face. And the concern. It was the concern that nearly undid me. But it was too late for me to go back now.

‘I came to tell you … to explain about myself,’ I said. ‘And to tell you why you can’t – why you mustn’t…’ I turned away from him. I could hear the crackle of the logs in the grate and the rain tapping rhythmically on the windowpanes. ‘I never was a widow,’ I said, at last.

I heard him move. Take a step closer to me. ‘And do you think I didn’t know? I didn’t guess?’ He grasped my hands, and pulled me gently back towards the warmth of the fire. ‘How many “Mrs Smiths” do you think come through the door of the hospital each year? Do you think I don’t know their stories, and the suffering they have been through? And do you think such a thing matters to me? You matter to me. Nothing else.’