Eden's Garden (6 page)

By late afternoon, my arms ached, and my head was swimming. I was on the bottom step of a staircase, polishing the dark wood of the banisters, when the world began to spin around me. I shut my eyes to steady myself, leaning for a moment against the cool wood in front of me.

‘I have to say, that looks less than comfortable.’

I jumped to my feet, cloths and polish scattering around me. Had I been asleep? At the very least, it would have looked like it. And of all the people…

‘I’m sorry, Mr Meredith,’ I muttered. There’s nothing like fear to make pride go into hiding. ‘It won’t happen again. I promise.’ I’d kiss his boots, if he asked me.

‘Mmm,’ he said. Those blue eyes of his were watching me. ‘I’ve an idea I may know what you need.’

I felt my fists clench. Maybe not all my pride was gone, after all. I don’t know whether he saw the action, but if he did, he ignored it. ‘Well, come along, Mrs Smith,’ he said, walking towards a door at the far end of the corridor. ‘And don’t worry, I’ll speak to Matron.’

Wonderful. I could just see Matron – a small wire of a woman, rumoured to have been trained by Miss Nightingale herself – and her reaction to such information.

So, either way, I was a lost cause. Which meant I wasn’t getting myself into this one without a fight. I hobbled after him as best I could, the dark-painted walls of the corridor weaving in and out, and the tiles of the floor undulating alarmingly, in flying carpet manner, as I made my way through.

‘Take a seat, Mrs Smith.’

I stopped in my tracks as I reached the doorway, my head steadying in the influx of fresh – or the nearest the city could offer as fresh – air. I was in a small garden at the heart of the hospital. The broad leaves of plane trees reached above me, yellow and scarlet in their autumn colours. Dried leaves detached themselves and spiralled slowly downwards every now and again, although their cover still almost hid the brick walls rising all around the little space.

For the first time since I had arrived in London, I was aware of birds chirruping away, their little voices echoing against the bricks, along with the sound of running water. Sparrows, seemingly quite unafraid, alighted by my feet and settled to drink by a small pool surrounded by greenery.

From nowhere, a memory stirred. I was back on that long stretch of sand, beneath the rocky cliffs of Treverick Bay, on a day so still the sea lay turquoise and motionless, apart from the splashing of small feet amidst the shallows. The sun was gentle on my face, and the sound of childish laughter filled the salt-tinged air.

In an instant, the old ache was back, deep in my heart, strong as it had ever been.

‘Please, do take a seat,’ he repeated gently, bringing me back to him, with a start. I could think of worse acts of obedience. I sat down on a wrought iron bench in the warmth of the sun. Within minutes, he had returned.

‘Coffee!’ I couldn’t remember when I had last tasted coffee. Wine, I could have turned down with ease. But the mere smell of freshly-brewed coffee was my undoing. He watched me with an unexpectedly youthful grin as I took a sip and leant back, savouring the moment. ‘Thank you,’ I murmured, and to hell with all consequences.

‘No matter.’ He placed something else by my side: a fat square slab of fruitcake.

I swallowed. ‘I can’t…’

‘Yes you can. Cook’s best
bara brith
, all the way from Plas Eden. Best thing for those recovering their strength from a fever.’

His voice was firm, without being highhanded about it. Despite myself, it made me smile. Hunger came out of nowhere, as it had not done in a long time, setting my senses alight. My stomach informed me I wasn’t about to pass up on this bounty, no chance at all.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘Good,’ he replied. He would sit down beside me. Engage me in conversation. I braced myself, keeping my gaze on my cup, aware that he had utterly disarmed me with his thoughtfulness. ‘Take all the time you need,’ he was saying. I looked up, but already he was striding away, sunshine streaking through his fair hair and turning to gold the quietly falling leaves.

I swore to myself I wouldn’t; but I knew, deep in my heart, that was a memory that would stay with me for the rest of my days.

And, for his kindness, and his asking nothing in return, I hoped – I couldn’t quite, even then, bring myself to go so far as to pray – that he, on the other hand, would forget it entirely.

 ‘An industrial estate?’ Rhiannon Lloyd looked up abruptly, splodges of watercolour dripping from her brush like terracotta rain onto the sketch on her knees. ‘You are planning to turn Plas Eden into an
industrial
estate?’

‘Not exactly industrial.’ Huw Meredith frowned at his aunt, smile fading rapidly. ‘More like a conference centre with purpose-built units for local business.’ He brightened. ‘Maybe craft shops, and studios for local artists. You’re always saying there’s not enough light in Eden. We could even put a purpose-built studio in the grounds for you.’

Poor Huw. Subtlety had never been his strong point, however hard he tried. Rhiannon concentrated on cleaning her brush in the jam jar of water beside her. Maybe it was different with your own children. Maybe there were bonds that bound you tightly, so that differences between you didn’t matter. She had tried so hard to love Huw and David equally since they had fallen to her care, all those years ago, even though Huw had made no secret of resenting her presence at Plas Eden from the start.

With a final swirl, she shook a shower of water droplets into the nearest rose bed and wiped the brush carefully dry. ‘So that’s what you and David were discussing at such length, just now?’ She should have known Huw had an ulterior motive for staying the entire afternoon, when usually on a Sunday not even his wife Angela could prise him away from the delights of Talarn Golf Club.

‘It was something we both felt needed raising.’

‘David agrees with you on this?’

‘Of course.’ Huw met her eye and turned an uncomfortable shade of pink. He cleared his throat, loudly. ‘Well, of course he’s not
happy
about it. None of us are, Auntie. But even David can see that the situation is impossible. That leg of his is never going to be as strong as it was before. He’s still got months of rehabilitation, and then he’s going to need to be careful. He can’t possibly lead adventure holidays, let alone the upkeep of Eden. It’s simply impossible.’

How very convenient, thought Rhiannon bitterly. Convenient for Huw, that is. Fifteen years ago, when his elder brother had taken over the running of the estate, Huw had never hidden his opinion that David was wasting both time and money in turning Eden’s west wing into self-catering holiday apartments and centre for outward-bound courses. Plas Eden sold – Huw had managed to suggest at every turn – would free up huge amounts of capital to invest in far more promising businesses. Such, coincidentally, as the ones Huw just happened to be starting up himself.

While Nainie was alive, selling Plas Eden had of course been out of the question. Within a year, David had managed to make the unpromising holiday venture pay, and Nainie had had her stroke. Huw had stopping his muttering. Until now, that is.

Rhiannon placed her brush with the rest in her little metal case, and set to tidying away her painting materials into their wicker basket, her face hidden. It might be unfair of her, but she couldn’t help but note that Huw’s renewal of this eagerness to see Plas Eden sold, did not only coincide with David’s unfortunate accident. There was now no longer Nainie, needing constant care, with the costs of hiring someone else to look after her, or of a nursing home, a drain on the estate.

Rhiannon pushed the thought quickly from her mind. Huw was, after all, the nearest thing to a younger son she would ever have. David took squarely after his father, and was a Meredith through and through. With Huw, on the other hand, there were times – not often but every now and again – when she could catch a fleeting touch of Marianne in his face. Huw had inherited her sister’s brown hair and dark eyes, and that long straight nose of hers, the one that Rhiannon could recognise in her own mirror. Huw was her flesh and blood, alright, however much their respective inner lives remained an anathema to each other.

‘Would you like to join David and me for dinner?’ she murmured, politely, by way of a peace offering.

‘That’s okay, Auntie. Must get back, Angela’s expecting me.’

‘Another time then.’ She did her best, but the relief in her voice was not exactly subtle. She picked up her basket and folding stool, accompanying Huw towards the impressively large black four by four sitting squarely in Eden’s driveway.

As he reached the car, Huw turned. ‘And you’ll think it over, Auntie?’

‘Of course I will,
cariad
. Give my love to Angela.’

‘Yes, yes. She’s very fond of you, you know.’ Which, thought Rhiannon, was possibly the nearest Huw would come to any statement of family feeling.

As the four by four purred itself down the drive – most probably consuming half an ancient forest before it had reached the gate, she muttered to herself darkly – Rhiannon strode back towards the house.

 

When Rhiannon had first come to live in Plas Eden, the west wing – now turned by David into pristine holiday apartments – had been a vast hinterland of cobwebbed rooms containing the dusty, moth-eaten remains of Victorian beds and Edwardian sideboards.

In those days, the east wing, in all its shabby, cluttered and entirely unpretentious state, had been the family home. It had remained that way ever since. There had been plans, years ago, to modernise the east wing and bring it up to scratch to meet Eden’s grand exterior. But after Nainie’s stroke, change had been impossible. Both David and Rhiannon had been in agreement: Plas Eden was Nainie’s life, the guardian of her memories. While Nainie was alive, nothing in the family part of the house could change.

‘Kettle’s on,’ came a distant voice, echoing through the panelled corridors as Rhiannon pushed open the heavy oak door into the hallway.

‘Thanks! Be with you in a minute,’ she called back, keeping her tone deliberately light. Rhiannon shivered slightly as she carefully stored her painting materials in a cupboard under the wide sweep of stairs, amongst the collection of boots and old coats half smothering a child’s sledge still kept there, just in case. However much she tried to push the fact from her mind, change was unmistakeably in the air, unsettling every part of her.

Rhiannon quickly made her way along the corridors to the large and well-worn kitchen. An ancient Rayburn, battered but still going strong, clicked and whirred gently to itself in the corner amidst the scrubbed pine of the units. A rack for drying clothes hung just above, festooned with dried bunches of rosemary and last year’s lavender.

‘Huw’s gone,’ came David’s voice from the sunroom that led off from the kitchen. She could hear the strain beneath the attempts to be cheerful.

‘Yes I know. Coffee?’

‘I was going to make it.’

Rhiannon smiled. The coffee had indeed been ground and measured and mugs set out on a wooden tray. ‘So you have,
cariad
. I only need to pour the water. You stay where you are. I can manage that.’

‘Hrmmph,’ came a grunt from the sunroom. No sounds of David struggling to his feet. Rhiannon frowned to herself. That was unlike David: the afternoon with Huw must have seriously taken it out of him.

On second thoughts, she reached down the tin with the remains of a spiced-apple cake. The topping had turned out far too sweet, but she had a feeling that neither of them would notice. There are times when only serious amounts of sugar will do.

‘Hello Hodge.’ The sounds of the cake tin being opened brought the arrival of a black Labrador-type dog of uncertain parentage, yawning and stretching as he reached her side. A damp nose butted her nearest hand, feathered tail batting slowly against the table leg in appreciative greeting.

Fitting the cake amongst the mugs, Rhiannon carried the tray down the two steps to the sunroom, Hodge trotting along in adoration – and not a little hope – behind her.

David was sitting in one of the ancient armchairs, his bad leg propped up on a stool. He looked up from scowling at his laptop as she appeared. ‘How did the painting go?’

‘Not bad. The light was beautiful this afternoon.’ She placed the tray on a low coffee table set next to David’s chair. His face was drawn and grey, the faint lines at the corners of his mouth tight. She hadn’t seen him like this since those first weeks after he’d been released from hospital, when there had been a metal brace running the length of his shin, keeping his shattered bones in place. The attaching rods had protruded from the flesh like an instrument of torture. David had never complained, but she knew him well enough to know when he was in pain.

‘Good.’ David closed up his laptop and placed it amongst the books and papers on a folding table that had been positioned on the other side of his chair. ‘Come over here, Hodge, and stop eying that cake. You always were a dog with a one-track mind.’

Rhiannon poured the coffee in silence, as David concentrated on fussing Hodge’s ears. They couldn’t put this off forever. One of them had to start somewhere.

‘Huw came to see me as he was leaving,’ she remarked, placing David’s mug within easy reach.

‘He did?’ David paused, hand half-outstretched towards his drink. The frown was back, deeper this time. ‘And what had he got to say for himself?’

‘Only to tell me what you were discussing.’

‘Damn Huw!’ David was struggling to his feet, coffee forgotten. ‘He promised me he wouldn’t say anything. Not until I’d talked it over with you and we’d had a serious look at all the alternatives.’ Grabbing his stick, he hobbled rapidly through the open door of the sunroom, like a man with several hundred demons behind him.

Rhiannon sighed, picked up the abandoned mug and followed him into a courtyard protected on each side by high stone walls. Along the borders beneath the walls, rosemary and oregano spread themselves beneath fragrant arches of clematis and sweet peas, and overhanging boughs from the neighbouring orchard.

David was standing in the centre of the enclosed space, gazing down into the water trickling over a pebble-filled urn into a surrounding pond, filled with the rapid darting of goldfish.

‘Coffee,’ said Rhiannon firmly, placing the mug in his hands.

‘Thanks,’ he muttered, not quite meeting her eyes.

‘It’s not your fault,
cariad
.’

‘That Huw tried to make you feel guilty?’

‘I’m sure that wasn’t his intention,’ she lied.

David swore under his breath. ‘Of course it was.’

Rhiannon sipped her drink without replying. She could feel fear clenched hard like a ball in her belly. There was no disguising the fact that, whatever he might have promised David, Huw had been determined to get in there first when it came to talking to Auntie Rhiannon.

As far as Huw was concerned, she had no claim on Plas Eden at all. She had seen the way her younger nephew regarded her if she ever mentioned her exhaustion during those last months of Nainie’s life. What had she to complain of? All she had to do was sit with an old lady, cook her meals and make sure she was comfortable. It wasn’t, his look would say, as if she had to
work
.

Was that his opinion of her for all the time she had been at Plas Eden? Rhiannon hoped he was fair enough to acknowledge that after the accident she had walked away from a good career in the civil service in London, as well as her friends and her life there. As an adult, would it have crossed his mind that there could have been other – even more precious – parts of her previous existence that she had left behind?

But even Angela, who adored her husband unquestioningly, had been heard to complain that he’d never done much with their two sons when they were little and seemed to have some idea that she sat around and did nothing all day. No she had to face it. In Huw’s mind, she was a middle-aged woman who had lived rent-free in Plas Eden for the past quarter of a century, occupying her plentiful free time with her little painting hobby.

‘We’ll work something out,’ said David, abruptly. He gave a wry grunt. ‘Bloody skiing, eh? If it hadn’t been for me stupidly trying to keep up with the others, none of this would have happened. I knew I should never have taken that holiday. Or at least just sat on a beach for a week.’

Rhiannon smiled. ‘You’d never have sat on a beach for a week,
cariad
. That’s just not your style. You’d have been on the phone to me every five minutes or so to check the guests in the west wing were behaving themselves, and I’d never have had any peace.’ She eyed him seriously. ‘Anyhow, it was time you took some time off to be with your friends. You haven’t had a holiday in years.’