The Garden House

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  To Ulf Töregård

  PROLOGUE

  The church is full. The service has ended and the organist plays quietly as friends and family file out of their pews to follow the coffin into the churchyard. The nave is flooded with bright slanting sunshine sliced by sharp black shadows, and long-stemmed flowers, purple and blue, cast splashes of colour across cold grey stone.

  Half hidden behind a pillar at the back of the church, struggling to control her tears, not wishing to be seen, Julia watches them. One or two she recognizes from photographs; most are strangers to her. As she stands up, preparatory to slipping away, she sees the tall young man that she noticed outside before the service. Her sudden movement catches his attention as he makes his slow progression down the aisle, and their eyes meet, hold for a moment, before he is drawn into a group of friends just inside the porch.

  Julia quickly makes her way out of the church, skirting the groups of people in the churchyard, hurrying away into the little lane that leads into Duke Street, heading back to the car park. Climbing into the car, casting her bag on to the passenger seat, she takes a huge breath, slumping for a moment, giving herself time to regroup. Martin is dead. Martin, who was so full of life, is dead because he stabbed his finger on some blackthorn and died of sepsis within forty-eight hours. Julia still doesn’t know how to process this: the shock, disbelief, and the devastating loss.

  Sitting quite still, staring unseeingly ahead, she recalls moments of their love. She remembers their first meeting at The Garden House, his first text to her:

  Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Woodstock.

  Suddenly she knows where she must go, as if he is showing her the way. The words sing in her head: ‘We are stardust, we are golden … And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.’

  She switches on the engine, pulls out of the car park, and drives away into the warm, late summer sunshine.

  CHAPTER ONE

  On this journey to claim her inheritance, El is filled with nervous anticipation. As she drives past familiar sign-posts and landmarks, she is wondering how it will feel to turn the key in the lock and walk in, knowing that this time it’s not just for a holiday or a visit; knowing that the Pig Pen belongs to her. El remembers how Pa phoned her during her first term at Durham.

  ‘I’ve found the perfect place to live, El,’ he said. ‘But you won’t believe what it’s called.’

  Even as she remembers, she is seized with this new sense of grief that overwhelms her at unexpected moments. Pa is dead. How can that be true? She wasn’t with him. She was celebrating with her university friends in Durham, having got a First in English. Thank God he’d known that; that she’d dashed down to see him as soon as she knew her results and that they’d celebrated in the Royal Oak at Meavy.

  ‘I’m so proud of you, darling,’ he said, raising his glass to her. ‘So very, very proud.’

  ‘You’ll come to my graduation, won’t you?’ she asked anxiously.

  Her father hesitated, cutting up some food, pretending to think about it. Even now, five years after the divorce, events that might involve both her parents are fraught with difficulty. Her mother has never forgiven him for being unfaithful; never shifted from her position as the betrayed wife. Nor has she forgiven El for continuing to love him.

  ‘I shall be furious with you if you don’t come,’ she told him fiercely.

  Now, as she drives through the early autumn landscape, she wishes she hadn’t said that. The graduation was hedged about with grief and shock. Her mother was there with Roger, El’s stepfather, but the event was coloured with a terrible sadness that couldn’t be dispelled. Roger was gentle and kind because it is his nature to be so, but her mother, even on such an occasion, was incapable of hiding her bitterness. El could see her consciously making the effort to hold back some blighting remark. She almost expected her to say, ‘Serves him right.’

  How awful, thinks El, pulling in to the Exeter motorway services for a pit stop – that’s what Pa always called them: ‘Time for a pit stop’ – how very sad, to be able to bear a grudge, to keep hatred and jealousy so vividly alive, for so long. She parks the car and reaches for her bag, checking her phone. There’s a text from Angus. Angus has guided her through the mysteries of probate, kept her focused despite her grief, and now, as Pa’s senior partner and closest friend, is welcoming her home.

  Home. She needs some coffee and to concentrate on what lies ahead, to stay strong, but it’s been difficult to remain positive in the face of her mother’s opposition.

  ‘You can’t seriously be considering living there?’ she asked incredulously. ‘In a cottage with a ridiculous name in a small village in the middle of Dartmoor? What on earth will you do?’

  Her mother has never seen the Pig Pen. After the separation, and as soon as the family home near Plymouth was sold, she moved back to Dorchester to be with her own father, taking sixteen-year-old El and her older brother Freddie with her. Freddie is a peacemaker. He tries to be all things to all men; he arbitrates between their mother and El with inarticulate affection. She understands that her obstinate love for her father is seen as disloyalty by her mother, but how can you help loving? How can you simply switch off such an instinctive emotion? It doesn’t help that deep down she can sympathize with the reasons why Pa might have been tempted by the offer of unconditional love, of warmth. Her mother is critical, touchy, driven.

  ‘She just wants us to do well,’ Freddie would say consolingly when there were tears over homework, or, ‘She likes us to feel proud of ourselves,’ when there were criticisms after the end-of-term concert. When Freddie went to Manchester to study medicine their mother was delighted. Freddie is her darling, her golden boy, and his loyalty to her is unquestioning. El loves him very much but, even at sixteen, she could see that it is sometimes necessary to take a stand, to choose a side, even if you might be on the losing team.

  ‘I can’t stop loving Pa,’ she shouted crossly during those awful early days of separation, ‘just because he’s done something wrong. Everybody does a wrong thing sometimes but it doesn’t mean you can just switch off everything you feel for them.’

  Her mother tried to explain the values of faithfulness, of loyalty, the difference between right and wrong, whilst Freddie watched anxiously, willing them both to arrive at a manageable, peaceful conclusion.

  Remembering, El smiles wryly. Even now, six years on from the initial parting, this is still a consummation devoutly to be wished. Barely two years later her mother married a boyfriend from her youth, Roger Bennett: a widower with a son, Will, six years older than Eleanor. Pa became a senior partner in the law firm in Plymouth where he’d worked all his life and then bought the Pig Pen from a farmer out on the moor not far from Tavistock. It was one of two conversions from old agricultural buildings: square stone buildings, slate roofed, separated from each other by an orchard and set about with dry-stone walls.

  ‘He says
he doesn’t hold with all these fancy names for conversions like the Linhay or the Old Dairy,’ Pa told her, laughing. ‘He’s called the other one the Hen House. Don’t you just love it? I can’t wait for you to see it. It’s small but perfect for everything I need. Hope you approve.’

  Now, El replies to Angus’s text, shoulders her bag and locks the car. She loved the Pig Pen from the very first moment she saw it, and now it belongs to her. Despite her fears, her anxieties that she should follow her mother’s advice to sell the Pig Pen and look for a job in London, El feels driven to take this opportunity: to try to make a life for herself where she has been so happy with Pa. Swallowing down tears, straightening her shoulders, she goes to find some coffee.

  * * *

  Over the moor in Tavistock, Angus emerges from the Pannier Market, pauses to buy a loaf of bread from the stall just outside, and heads across the square to the Bedford Hotel’s car park. As he loads his shopping into the car his phone pings: it’s a text from Eleanor. He reads it and then goes into the hotel and up the stairs. In the bar he glances round, and then smiles at the sight of two women sitting at the table by the window, laughing together over the coffee cups. Cass and Kate have been meeting here for more than forty years to discuss husbands, lovers and, latterly, their grandchildren. Cass’s daughter Gemma is married to Kate’s son Guy, and their twins, just off to university, are the joint delight and concern of the two older women, as is their extended family who own and run a sailing school down on the Tamar. Angus orders his coffee from Lynn at the bar, catches Kate’s eye and is warmed by the way both women wave, indicating that he must join them. Their friendship is all the more precious to him since his beloved Marina died nearly three years ago. She was very fond of Cass and Kate.

  ‘They’re such fun,’ she’d say, after a coffee session in the Bedford. ‘And yet they’re so different. Cass is a hedonist and Kate is an idealist. It must be wonderful to have a shared past that goes back to your schooldays, and then all those years as naval wives, supporting each other.’

  Angus agrees with that. Very old friends still see in each other their former selves. In this way, they never truly grow old.

  ‘El’s moving in today,’ he tells them, as they transfer coats and bags to a spare chair to make space for him. ‘She’s stopped off for coffee at Exeter. Now tell me, would it be a good move to go over to the cottage to be waiting for her so as to welcome her, or is this something she should do alone?’

  The two women look at each other. Cass, her fair hair silvery now, long and twisted into the back of her neck, is elegant, whilst Kate, dressed in jeans and a guernsey, still has an oddly youthful look.

  ‘Alone,’ suggests Kate. ‘I think she needs to have time to take it all in. I know she’s been there once or twice since Martin died but it’s different this time, isn’t it?’

  Cass nods her agreement. ‘Yes. If you’re there she’ll think she needs to concentrate on you rather than just being able to enter into the whole thing naturally.’ She pushes aside her cafetiere to make space for Angus’s coffee. ‘But you could let her know that you’re around?’

  They glance at him, concerned, slightly wary, and he suspects that they’re wondering if this is reminding him of Marina. He is touched but has no intention of allowing the conversation to become maudlin.

  ‘Good,’ he says cheerfully, pouring his coffee. ‘That confirms my gut reaction. So what’s the latest news? You were looking rather conspiratorial when I came in. How’s Tom?’

  Cass rolls her eyes. ‘He’s got his nephew staying with us. Dear fellow but he can’t eat this and he can’t tolerate that and he’s given up booze. Utterly dire, darling.’

  Kate grins and Angus bursts out laughing.

  ‘Sounds like a fun visit,’ he observes. ‘How’s old Tom dealing with that?’

  ‘Not very well,’ admits Cass. ‘After all those years in submarines he doesn’t have much patience with fads. It’s lucky we’ve got Kate staying, too, so she and I can sneak off when the going gets tough.’

  ‘He is rather too precious to live,’ admits Kate. ‘He asked us why our sixties generation was so degenerate. You know, drugs, sex and rock’n’roll? And Cass said, “FOMO, darling,” and he just stared at her blankly.’

  ‘No sense of humour,’ says Cass bleakly.

  ‘Hang on,’ says Angus. ‘What’s FOMO?’

  They look at him disbelievingly, then at each other and shrug at such ignorance.

  Cass sighs. ‘Fear of missing out,’ she says slowly and patiently. ‘Got it now? Do keep up, Angus.’

  Angus laughs. ‘I’ll try. So, in that case, why don’t I invite you both to lunch?’

  He drinks his coffee, watching them as they look at one another, deciding, and he hopes that they will accept his offer. He’s beginning to understand the ruthlessness of the really lonely but he fights against it, and so he waits, determined to say nothing else that might persuade them.

  ‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t,’ says Cass at last. ‘Tom can manage lunch for them both but I’ll have to phone him.’

  Angus glances at his watch. ‘Nearly midday. Why don’t I finish my coffee and then get us a drink while we have a look at the menu?’

  Cass beams at him. ‘Sounds good to me,’ she says. ‘There’s not a good enough signal to phone from here so I’ll have to dash outside.’

  She gets up and goes out. Kate smiles at Angus.

  ‘This is very kind of you. I must admit that life at the Old Rectory is a bit stressed at the moment. Tom’s irascibility hasn’t improved with age. So do you think El’s right to be moving in?’

  He’s slightly surprised by the change of direction and sips his coffee to give himself time to think.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says at last. ‘I hope so. I know she loves the place, but it’s going to be very different without Martin and I’m not sure what she’s considering career-wise. She says that her mother isn’t very happy about it.’

  ‘Well, I can understand that,’ says Kate. ‘It’s been a very unhappy situation anyway, hasn’t it? But this is a big step for a young girl. Quite a distance from her uni friends and her family. No job. I can imagine that Felicity would be anxious about her.’

  ‘El’s got friends here, too,’ says Angus. ‘I think she needs time to come to terms with things. After all, lots of young people take a year out after university, don’t they? They don’t all immediately start on a career. She needs a bit of space.’ He shakes his head. ‘I still can hardly take it in. It was so quick. Poor old Martin. He was so proud of her.’

  Before Kate can answer, Cass is back.

  ‘Tom’s not pleased but he sends his regards, Angus, and says have a wet for him.’

  Angus grins at the naval expression. ‘I certainly will. We all will.’

  He feels cheerful at the immediate prospect and meanwhile he’ll wait to see if El needs any kind of support. As her lawyer, and as Martin’s closest, oldest friend he feels a strong sense of responsibility for her.

  ‘Let’s have that drink,’ he says.

  As he moves to stand up his foot encounters something soft and there’s a small yelp. He bends down to see a flat-coated retriever coming out from beneath the table, tail wagging, her whole bearing apologetic.

  ‘I’m sorry, Floss,’ exclaims Angus, bending to stroke her. ‘I had no idea you were there.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ says Kate, holding the lead. ‘You know how much she loves coming into the Bedford so I didn’t have the heart to leave her in the car. We’ve already taken her for a walk up around Burrator so she’d crashed out by the time you arrived. She’ll be fine.’

  She strokes Floss, settling her again.

  ‘How long are you up from Cornwall for?’

  ‘I’m decorating my cottage in Chapel Street in preparation for new tenants,’ answers Kate. ‘So I’m here for as long as it takes, unless Tom chucks me out. If he does, then I’ll have to come and stay with you.’

  Angus grins at her; he
enjoys these little flirtatious moments with Kate.

  ‘Open house,’ he says. ‘You know that.’

  ‘I’ll come and help you carry,’ offers Cass, and they go to the bar together. Angus is still thinking about El and Martin, and Cass takes his arm for a moment as if to comfort him.

  ‘Don’t worry too much about El. She’ll be OK,’ she tells him. ‘El’s tough. We’re not far away and Martin had a good network of friends. We’ll be looking out for her.’

  ‘I know,’ he answers gratefully. ‘It’s only because she has such little family support. Now, what are you and Kate drinking? Let’s get some menus and then you can tell me all the news.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  As El drives towards Postbridge she notices the change in the seasons. When she drove down to bring the glad tidings of her exam results it was very hot. The countryside was languorous, dozing in the heat; tall foxgloves glowing against granite walls, creamy cow parsley nearly head high, sheep seeking shade under a thorn tree; the white vapour of a plane smudged across the blue board of the sky. Today the landscape looks as if it has been chalked in with a casual hand – dusty golds, faded pinks, bronze – and tattered clouds race before the strong south-westerly winds.

  She drives through the village, passing the old clapper bridge, remembering journeys with her father, walks, picnics. In earlier days these had included her mother and Freddie, and it was odd and rather nice, after the divorce, to find that Pa was such a good companion, such fun to be with. Without her mother’s controlling influence, her irritation at any kind of foolishness, he was relaxed, funny, always ready for an unexpected jaunt.

  Cloud shadows race across the tors and a flurry of crows disappear into Bellever Woods. El drives warily, always aware of the grazing sheep, the ponies cantering amongst the boulders at the road’s edge. She leaves Princetown away to the left and heads towards Tavistock. Soon she will turn off into smaller lanes and then she will be home. Her hands grip the wheel a little tighter. Angus’s text is comforting – Here if you need me – but she has to do this on her own. She doesn’t want to put on a brave face for Angus’s benefit; she needs to be able to react naturally.