Eden's Garden (32 page)

It was an unusually hard winter. In other years, being so close to the sea, Treverick had rarely been visited by snow and ice. But as I finally emerged from the listlessness that hung over me, I found myself wandering aimlessly, hour upon hour, amongst the ice-clad ponds and frosted trellises of Treverick’s garden.

Strangely, of all of them, it was Judith who chose to spend time with me. At her age, I remembered with shame, my own chatter had been about ribbons and the lace for my next dress, and whichever of the young men was handsome – and most definitely rich – in the neighbourhood.

Judith, on the other hand, was full of plans for the coming spring. For the plants she was raising in a corner of the smallest greenhouse, and for creating a wilderness for the waterfall, so that it appeared to be in truth a rushing mountain stream. She sketched her plans, endlessly. Changing them, this way and that, filling her paper with drawings as she did so.

There was a sculptor in the village. A young man with high ambitions, I believe. A passionate follower of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood – much to the outrage of Uncle Jolyon, who still cornered the vicar most Sundays on the subject of Filth Allowed to Corrupt Young Minds, and Where Would it Lead To? Although for now at least, young Mr Pawley – having been born into respectability rather than wealth – was dedicating himself to the trade of creating garden ornaments in the no less honourable pursuit of keeping a roof over his head and his belly reasonably full.

I watched for a while as Judith made her plans for Mr Pawley to follow. The nymph I thought he might enjoy. While the satyr, I had a feeling, might just get out of hand, and be banished forever into the furthest undergrowth.

I could still smile, I found. Still laugh at times too. And, strangely enough, never had the gardens seemed so beautiful. It was as if my senses had been woken. I saw, as I had never seen, the lacing of spiders’ webs across the grass, bejewelled with mist. The frost flowers icing the windows had never seemed so intricate and so marvellous. And before long my fingers were itching, Until, one day, I took up Judith’s abandoned pencil and paper, and I began to draw.

Until then, my painting had been for show. As I worked, I had heard the words of admiration that would flow once it was displayed. But now it became a passion. My existence. My way of being in the world. Each day as my confidence grew, and I became more ambitious in my attempts, I found an inner peace returning. My sorrow was still there. I saw it would be there, as part of me, for as long as I lived. But I had found a way to live again.

I should have known my peace would not last. I suppose they told him I was recovered. That I had left my room and returned to some semblance of the woman I had been before.

Whatever it was, he appeared one night at my door. I blinked at him in surprise. I had never particularly enjoyed his attentions, and since our son’s death I had been left well alone. I could not be as I had been before. I could not smile. I could not please. I could not be what he wanted me to be. At first it had stabbed me to the heart that he could not even seem to bear the exchange of a few words with me. That my lack of smiles and silly chatter seemed to disturb him. But then I had welcomed the peace his absence brought.

I looked at him in bewilderment. He seemed a little embarrassed. I’ll give him his due, my husband was not entirely lacking in brains; he had sense enough to know that I was no longer the girl he had married.

He muttered something. Something about a child. And how it would be good for me.

‘It’s too soon,’ I said quickly. Suddenly I was afraid. I could not have a child. Not now. One day, maybe. Or maybe never. But not now. Not with my grief so raw. Not with this new creature I was becoming still struggling towards life inside me. For some it might be the answer. But not for me. I knew, as clear as daylight, I would truly lose my mind.

He smiled and reached for the fastening of my nightgown. ‘You will not think that when you hold our child in your arms,’ he said.

I looked at him, this man I had married. And it was as if the final illusion fell away. I saw that for all the years we had been man and wife, I did not know him at all. No more than he did me.

I had married seeing only the envious eyes of the other girls in my circle. I had lived my life in their imaginary gaze. And he? A brutal clarity hit me at that moment. I saw without doubt that he had not chosen me for my father’s money alone. Had I not seen myself that there were heiresses in London with more dowry to bring, and far more beauty and accomplishment than I could ever boast?

No; William was a man who arranged the world according to his own comfort. He had seen that I would not demand of him, or create any disturbance in his life. He had chosen me above all others because in my indolent emptiness, he had recognised his own.

He stroked my face, his eyes soft and sentimental. As if somehow that was enough. Panic began to rise inside me. I had not seen the memorial he had had placed in Treverick church to his son, but I had heard that it was a fine one. The best money could buy. Like clothes packed away into a trunk, he had already placed Charlie in the realms of things gone by. Our son’s death was God’s will. Nothing to do with his parents’ actions, our mutual selfishness and lack of care. God had called Charlie to him, and there Charlie sat in Heaven as an angel, smiling down at us. Life could go on, just as it had done before.

Had I remained quiet, the moment would have passed, as it had always passed before and, child or no child, my body would have dragged itself on a little longer in my gilded prison. Had I struggled, he might even have shown some enthusiasm for the task. But instead, I think for that minute at least, I was truly mad. I laughed. It was a bitter laugh, but a laugh.

He paused. No longer the amorous Knight wooing his Lady. He looked affronted, clinging to his dignity like a schoolboy who had lost his footing on ice and gone sprawling headlong in the mud. There was a foolishness about him that made me laugh all the more. Wildly now, unable to stop myself.

He turned on his heels and left. Stillness descended into my room. After a while, my laughter died. Desperately, like a drowning woman, I took up my pencil and began to draw great ships sailing the oceans, their sails in full flight, until my mind settled and sanity came creeping back. This time to stay.

I thought I had defeated him. I thought I would be left alone for a little while longer at least. I thought I had time to find myself again, so that I would be ready to face this life I had chosen so blindly, and now wanted nothing more than to escape. Even though it might be to a life in poverty and disgrace, at least it would be a life.

Fool that I was I thought he would let me go. I knew so little of the world, then, and I knew nothing of pride. Of saving face. And I did not understand the power he had been given, the moment I married him, to decide my fate.

 

For many months William ignored my presence. Guests came and went. I heard their talk and laughter below, but I was never summoned. Judith would often escape and join me in my lonely state in my rooms. She would watch me sometimes, her eyes full of concern.

‘Could you not make your peace with William?’ she asked one evening, as we watched the sun sink beneath the horizon. Summer was in the air, with a smell of roses on the warm breeze.

‘One day, maybe,’ I replied. I had no wish to hurt her feelings. And to tell the truth, this estrangement from my husband had begun to weary me. His life was the one that continued as it had done before. For all I knew, he had taken a mistress. He would not have been the first. I was the one who remained a prisoner within Treverick Hall. By then I had given up even trying to order the carriage, or even Guinevere, my mare. The servants, I could see, had their orders. I was too proud to stamp my feet and scream. I soon grew tired of their embarrassment at my requests, and the way they avoided my eyes now, at all times.

‘Maybe soon?’ she persisted. I was surprised to see the glint of tears. ‘It’s just that sometimes, when he talks of you…’

‘He talks of me?’

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ she replied. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing.’

It seemed I had no choice. As that perfect summer wore on, with day after day of cloudless skies, so life returned with it, making me restless. He would not let me go. I had understood that by now. That was not how the world worked, and for all the raging against it within me there was nothing I could do to change it.

I began to understand Aunt Beatrice a little more. I had never seen her gainsay my uncle, at least not to his face. But looking back now I could see that her life was at its fullest when Uncle Jolyon was not there. She had her friends, her charities, her occupations. She had no children of her own, but she had spoilt me to her heart’s content from the moment I had arrived, a bewildered five-year-old child, when the typhoid fever killed my parents and my baby brother.

As the summer wore on to autumn, it seemed to me that such a bargain was the only way open to me. At least it would be some kind of life. Who said that our next child would be a boy? With a girl, maybe, I reasoned to myself, at least I could find some meaning to my life again. And so I swallowed my pride and resolved to fight my husband no longer.

My first opportunity to demonstrate my new acquiescence came the very next day.

‘You ordered the carriage,’ said William. He was standing at one of the tall drawing-room windows, watching Judith making her way down the drive in the company of her cousin, Arabella Phelps, stalwart of the Treverick Widows and Orphans Society.

He had not spoken to me in so long I eyed him in surprise. ‘No,’ I replied.

‘Well, you should,’ he returned. ‘The sea air will do you good. I will order it for you now.’

‘Thank you,’ I replied, grateful that he had made this first overture of peace between us.

‘Good.’ He was turned away from me, pulling the bell cord to summon the servants, so I could not see his face. ‘I shall accompany you, as Judith is otherwise occupied.’

I kept my pride firmly in check. ‘Thank you,’ I replied, in the humblest of tones. ‘That is very kind.’

‘There is no need for you to change,’ he added, as I made a move to return to my room. ‘We should go directly, before the rain comes.’

It was a beautiful, clear September day. I felt the sun on my face as we drove past Treverick Harbour and along the coastal road. I tried to speak to him, to demonstrate my gratitude and my wish for us to be friends again. He made little reply. But then, I reasoned to myself, he had his pride, too. He could not choose but hear. And, after all, had I not charmed him once? Surely, over time, I could charm him again. So I settled back on the cushions and watched the green fields pass by as the carriage began to take the road inland, away from the turquoise swell of the sea.

We took a road I did not know. A small, winding road that led onto a broad expanse of moorland with a distant glimpse of the ocean. I had eaten little for months, and I was growing tired by now, and dizzy with the movement of the carriage and the heat. I shut my eyes. I must have dozed a little, for the next thing I knew we were passing through high iron gates. For a confused moment, I thought we had returned to Treverick.

‘We are here,’ said William. The carriage door was opened. Puzzled, but thankful for the motion to have stopped, I followed as he stepped out, handing me down. A group of people were waiting for us. As if they had been expecting us, I suddenly saw, with the first stirrings of alarm. I looked up at the grim bricks of the building. The bars at every window.

‘William –’ I turned, fear rising inside me, strangling my voice. But already it was too late. He had already stepped swiftly back inside the carriage, and was impatiently calling to the driver to move off.

I was stunned. I stood there, unable to understand what was happening to me. Then I ran, as fast as my weakened legs could take me, towards the only link with my life, now vanishing rapidly out of the gates.

I did not get more than a few paces. ‘There, there, Mrs Adams.’ My arm was grasped firmly by a large, burly woman. ‘No need to fret. You’ll be safe here. No need to distress yourself.’

I stared at her. ‘I am not Mrs Adams. I am Ann Treverick. I wish to return with my husband. Let me go! I am not Mrs Adams.’

‘Of course you’re not, dear.’ The woman’s voice was cajoling. As if speaking to a child. A child who might protest, but would have to give in at some point. ‘You’ll be quite safe here.’

She was holding me easily, but securely, so that I could not even struggle. A woman accustomed to restraining those in her charge. I do not know if it was anger, or terror, that held the upper hand in me, as I was marched, helpless, towards the house.