The Sea Garden Read online

  Standing by the balustrade at the edge of the sea garden, his hand on the sun-warmed wood carving of the old ship’s figurehead, Circe, he recalls the night of Al’s death. The four of them crewed regularly for each other: Al and Mike; Johnnie and Fred. They’d been sailing out in the Western Approaches and, as night fell, were heading home, running before a strong south-westerly, which was gusting to gale force. Al and Mike had the midnight watch: he and Fred were in their bunks below. It was Mike who gave the alarm; Mike’s voice echoing down the hatchway: ‘Man overboard!’

  Johnnie remembers being woken by raised voices, the boat’s sudden gybe, being nearly thrown from his bunk. He and Fred scrambled out together, confused and frightened, jostling up the companionway where Mike was struggling to release the life buoy.

  ‘Take the helm!’ The words were snatched and flung away by the wind but they hurried to obey him. Mike had the life buoy in both hands then, and was lifting it, hefting it over the side, grabbing for the cockpit searchlight. ‘Put her about!’ he yelled. As black choppy water slopped into the cockpit, Fred seized the helm and put it down, ducking as the boom swung over his head. Together they brought the boat under control while Mike swung the searchlight to and fro. They’d patrolled the area until dawn, waiting and watching, shouting in turn, but there was no sign of Al.

  Later, Mike said that he’d just been going below to make coffee in the galley when the sudden squall hit the boat. It must have caught Al by surprise, he said, for he’d lost control, been struck on the head by the boom and knocked overboard as the boat gybed. His body has never been recovered.

  Johnnie’s hand automatically smoothes the carved, painted wood of Circe’s gown, hearing again the raised voices followed by the boat’s sudden lurch. The figurehead stands above him, staring downriver towards the sea, chin lifted, as if she is waiting for the tide to lift her upon its bosom and give her life again.

  There is the sound of a car’s engine in the lane behind the house and, calling to Popps, he hurries back to welcome Jess.

  * * *

  Rowena is before him, waiting impatiently. She has always been impatient: anything that is drawn out, slow, drives her almost insane. Long anecdotes or explanations, watching somebody doing something that she can accomplish in half the time, guarantee a tension inside her that makes her feel she might explode. So she hurries out to the car, bringing Jess into the sunny morning-room and ignoring the kitchen where Sophie will have put the coffee things ready. Rowena cannot understand the modern passion for entertaining in the kitchen; much nicer in this pretty little panelled room where she writes her letters and reads than in the rather dark, north-west facing kitchen.

  Popps comes bundling in behind them, barking excitedly, and Rowena says, ‘Quiet, Popps. You remember Jess,’ and Jess bends to stroke the little dog, gently rubs the small velvety ears between her fingers.

  ‘It’s a funny name,’ she says, suddenly overcome with shyness. ‘Is it short for Poppy?’

  ‘Johnnie’s to blame,’ says Rowena. ‘When she was a puppy she’d howl when she was left alone and Johnnie said she sounded like Lucia Popp warming up for a concert. “Popp’s off again,” he’d say, and the name just stuck.’

  Jess laughs, glad of the distraction with the little terrier, beginning to feel less nervous.

  ‘We always had black Labradors at home,’ she says. ‘Mum wasn’t really a dog person but Daddy hated to be without a dog.’

  ‘Did he?’ Rowena sits down at the big round rosewood table where newspapers and magazines are scattered. There are letters half out of their envelopes, and a yellow painted china pot with pencils and pens standing in it. Her hands stray amongst the letters, tidying them. ‘What was he like, your father?’

  Before she can reply, Johnnie speaks from behind her.

  ‘Good morning, Jess. So you found your way to us. Well done.’

  Jess turns to him, almost with relief. There is an intensity about the older woman that is very slightly unnerving.

  ‘Kate gave me very good directions,’ she answers, ‘but I certainly had to concentrate.’

  ‘Then you deserve some coffee,’ he says. ‘Sophie hoped she’d be back before you arrived but I’m sure she’ll have left something ready.’

  ‘Can I help?’ she asks, smiling at Rowena and following him out with Popps close behind them.

  Rowena listens to their voices, and to the patter and click of Popps’ claws, as they cross the hall. She sits quite still, folding and smoothing the pages of a letter from an old friend and pushing them back into the envelope, hardly aware of what she is doing.

  In the kitchen Jess helps Johnnie to put the coffee things onto the tray. She feels completely at ease with him, he is so kind and amusing and relaxed, and she likes it here in the warm, muddly kitchen with the percolator popping.

  ‘We simply couldn’t manage without Sophes,’ he’s saying. ‘Thank God she never wanted to leave us. When the girls and all the children come in the holidays I’d be utterly out of my depth without her. And she’s wonderful with Will.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to meeting Will,’ says Jess, arranging biscuits on a hand-painted blue and yellow plate.

  ‘Will’s ten going on forty.’ Johnnie puts the coffee pot onto the tray. ‘He has three little sisters who drive him right round the bend, poor chap, and it’s made him old before his time.’

  Jess laughs. Suddenly she’s happy again, all her nerves and fears put to rest by this delightful man. In an odd way he reminds her of her father; perhaps it’s the military influence.

  ‘He’s lucky to have you here,’ she tells him. ‘I used to go to friends for exeats and Sundays out once Daddy died. Brussels was just too far. Will’s lucky to come back to his own home.’

  ‘It’s lucky for us, too. We love having him out, teaching him to sail. Can you manage the plate if I take the tray? Mother prefers to have coffee in the morning-room.’

  Jess hesitates. ‘The thing is,’ she says confidentially, ‘I don’t quite know what to call your mother. She said not to keep calling her Lady Trehearne last Sunday but I simply can’t call her Rowena. Can I?’

  ‘What did she say about it?’

  ‘She said that I could call her Rowena…’ she hesitates, ‘but that it might be fun if I could call her Great-granny like all the other young ones do.’

  His blue eyes narrow as he smiles. ‘Between you and me, they call her the granny-monster, but never mind.’

  ‘But even so.’

  He sees her discomfiture and puts the tray back on the table.

  ‘The thing is,’ he tells her, ‘that, to my mother, you’re one of a group of people who have been a part of the family for ever. Mike and Juliet were around so much, you see. Mike was my brother’s closest friend from childhood onwards. Then there are my daughters and their husbands and innumerable sprogs. She simply sees you as one of this extended family. It would probably give her a great deal of pleasure if you could manage it, but you must feel comfortable, too. It’s awful when people want you to call them things you feel unhappy with.’

  Jess nods, and he picks up the tray again, and they go back to the morning-room.

  * * *

  Later, on her own in the sail loft, Jess has time to collect her ideas and thoughts, and try to make sense of them. The great room swims in sunlight and river light; it is as if she is enclosed in a shining bubble. She goes out onto the balcony to get her bearings.

  Across the river a small village of huddled cottages lies in the shelter of the hill. As she watches she sees a small rowing boat move out of the shadows along the waterfront, heading towards one of the bigger boats at anchor. Once again she has the oddest feeling that this has happened before; that the scene is familiar. Perhaps Juliet once stood here, her hands on the sun-warmed balustrade, and watched the boats on the Tamar and the birds wheeling low over the water. This thought doesn’t upset her; she simply has a great longing to understand this strange sense of connection.

 
; Both Johnnie and Lady T – after so much time with Kate she simply can’t help thinking of her as Lady T – were both pleased when she told them that she loved sailing. ‘Daddy taught me,’ she said, and Lady T gave a little cry of triumph, quickly suppressed, as though an important point had been made.

  ‘We’ll go out tomorrow,’ Johnnie said, ‘just to give you a feel of the river. If you’d like to.’

  Jess looks back into the room, wondering how she can make her own impression on it; give it a personal touch. Her belongings are too few to make any impact on such a space, but she puts her laptop and notebooks on a round mahogany table under one of the windows and carefully unpacks the little painting Kate has given her.

  ‘But I want you to have it,’ she said, when Jess protested. ‘It belongs to you now. David would have been so pleased. It’s the next stage in its own story.’

  ‘A sign,’ Jess said. ‘Or a portent. Thank you so much. I can’t believe I have my own David Porteous painting.’

  She looks around for a place to stand its little lectern: on the low table, which has books and magazines on it? Or on the shelf between two of the windows? Nowhere seems quite worthy of it. So she puts it carefully beside her laptop and notebooks, hoping that it might inspire her. Despite the fact that she wants to upload some photographs from her camera to the laptop and study them, she is drawn back again to the balcony. Perhaps, after all, this will be too much of a distraction; she will get no work done.

  The little rowing boat is now empty, rocking gently, attached by its painter to one of the bigger boats; a figure, silhouetted against the sun, moves about on its deck then disappears below. A cormorant flaps slowly upriver and lands on one of the buoys; it balances, stretching its wings, its crucifix-shape perfectly mirrored in the glasslike surface of the water.

  Jess takes a deep, contented breath: she will take her camera and walk along the river bank.

  * * *

  From the kitchen’s side window, Sophie sees her go through the little wicket gate.

  ‘Good,’ she says with satisfaction. ‘I’m so glad she doesn’t feel she has to stick around being polite. Rowena seems a bit on edge. Is there something you’re not telling me?’

  Johnnie is kicking off his shoes at the end of the short passage by the back door, to put on his gumboots, and she comes away from the window to look at him from the kitchen door.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ His voice is slightly muffled as he bends down to tuck his jeans into his boots.

  ‘She’s edgy,’ Sophie insists. ‘All bright and alert as if she’s expecting something to happen. Something to do with Jess.’

  ‘Oh, surely not. She’s just enjoying having a young person around. Mother’s always enjoyed the company of the young.’

  He’s got his boots on now and he turns to look at her. His expression is blandly cheerful, open, and she looks back at him thoughtfully. ‘Come off it,’ she wants to say to him but, just for a moment, she feels she is being warned off. His eyes narrow with amusement, as if he recognizes her dilemma.

  ‘I’m off to mow,’ he says. ‘Last cut of the year, I’d say. Everything’s fine, Sophes. It’s just having Jess here brings back memories for all of us. Times past and all that stuff. It’s that Proustian moment.’

  ‘Good,’ she says brightly. ‘That’s OK then. But I’m not making madeleines for tea so don’t think it.’

  He laughs and goes out, and she turns back into the kitchen, thinking about Rowena: that little edginess when Jess is there, and the look of inward concentration when she isn’t. It’s as if Rowena is doing a complicated mental jigsaw puzzle, fitting in the pieces, trying them for size. And it is clear that Jess is an important piece of the puzzle. Even in her nineties the older woman’s mental acuity is still formidable but Sophie feels anxious. She is not by nature fanciful but she is worried by the intensity of Rowena’s reaction to Jess and how it might affect her health.

  Sophie glances from the window again and sees that there is no sign of Jess. It’s good that the girl is already feeling the freedom of making herself at home – yet the little niggling anxiety remains.

  * * *

  Jess steps out cautiously along the high-tide line, picking her way across the saltings. Here and there the narrow lane is separated from the river bank by stands of spindleberries and thorn and the yellow buddleia weyeriana and, when the way before her looks too muddy, she squeezes between their branches to get back into the lane.

  The tide is on the turn: in the deep-water channel the current is running fast, the surface is choppy and rough, yet across the mudflats the water lies smooth and calm. She stops to watch a small motorboat speeding downriver with the tide, its bow wave rippling from shore to shore. The man on the yacht has come back on deck and stands to watch the noisy little boat. He remains standing, looking towards her now, and instinctively she waves to him – she knows that water-borne people are usually friendly – and after a moment he raises a hand in response.

  For some reason this pleases her, makes her feel at home, and she walks on, listening to the dry rustling of the reeds and the plaintive bubbling call of the curlew. It is hot here in the sunshine, orange and white butterflies flit above the sedges, and she snuffs up the rich vegetative smell of mud and seaweed and rotting wood. She takes some photographs of the spindleberries and the weyeriana and wanders on again, enchanted by the magical beauty and the peace.

  * * *

  ‘It’s still so hot, isn’t it?’ says Sophie. ‘It’s amazing for October. Shall we picnic in the summerhouse? It seems a shame to waste such a glorious day being indoors. Pity the tides aren’t right; we could have all gone sailing after lunch.’

  ‘I’m hoping we can get out for an hour or two tomorrow morning just to see how Jess makes out,’ answers Johnnie. ‘Get down to the Hamoaze if the wind’s right. Shall I help you carry?’

  ‘Yes, please. I’ll get some things together and put them on a tray.’

  ‘Is Jess back?’ asks Rowena, coming into the kitchen. ‘It must be nearly lunchtime.’

  ‘We were just saying that a picnic in the summerhouse might be good,’ says Sophie. ‘Nice for Jess, too. Informal and fun.’

  ‘The young enjoy picnics,’ adds Johnnie.

  ‘She’s not a child,’ says Rowena, irritated by this banal remark. ‘I’m sure Jess is quite able to manage a knife and fork at the dining-room table. However…’

  The ‘however’ hangs in the air as she turns away and goes out: it is her unspoken if reluctant permission, and Johnnie and Sophie exchange quick glances of amusement. They hear voices outside; Jess sounds as if she’s apologizing and Rowena is reassuring her.

  ‘You’re not at all late. And we’re having a picnic in the summerhouse. I thought you’d like that. You’ll be able to imagine what it was like when we had our parties. Juliet loved parties and picnics…’

  The voices fade away in the direction of the sea garden.

  ‘She is impossible,’ says Sophie. ‘And I still think that something’s going on. I know Mike was Al’s best friend but I’ve never seen Rowena quite like this before. She’s not even like it with her own grandchildren.’

  Johnnie picks up the tray, which is loaded with knives and forks and plates, and sets it down again.

  ‘I think it’s all come as a bit of a shock,’ he says. ‘Jess looks exactly like Juliet did, and I have to admit it’s quite uncanny. Al had a thing about Juliet, you know, and Mother believed that Al should have been the one to marry her. She always believed that Al should have whatever he wanted, even his best friend’s wife. But it all happened a long time ago and I think that Mother’s managed to convince herself that, because they were all such close friends, Juliet belonged to Al as well as Mike. And so Jess belongs, too. Perhaps it’s her way of reliving the past and remembering them all, and especially Al, in a happy way. After all, she’s ninety-two and we can’t blame her if she gets confused.’

  ‘Her brain is as sharp as a razor,’ says Sophie, ‘but
I can see that she might want to rewrite history a bit in an attempt to remember happy times as she would have liked them to be. I suppose even Rowena might be capable of the odd attack of romantic nostalgia, though it seems rather out of character.’

  ‘They were happy times.’ Johnnie sounds as if he is trying to convince himself. ‘Al and Mike were great oppos but they were competitors too, and Mike got Juliet. Al was certainly very taken with her. Anyway, I think Mother wants to think of them when they were all very young together. Like you said, she’s airbrushing out what she doesn’t want to remember.’

  ‘Odd, though, in a way. If Juliet came between Al and Mike you’d think that Rowena might resent her and not want to meet her granddaughter, let alone be so friendly. It would be a fairly normal reaction, wouldn’t it?’

  Johnnie frowns, as if he is trying to see it from his mother’s point of view.

  ‘I told you, I think it’s just a question of Mother seizing a chance to talk to anyone who has any kind of relationship to Al, however distant. It gives her a chance to live things through again, to talk about the parties and the dancing and the fun. She’s going to show Jess the old photographs and do all that stuff. It’s doing her good, I’m sure of it. Look, we’d better crack on or they’ll wonder where we are.’

  He takes the tray and goes out. Sophie begins to stack the second tray: a loaf of new bread, cheese and butter, pâté. As she washes some cherry tomatoes she thinks how typical it is of Johnnie not to be resentful of this streak to the past that doesn’t seem to include him. His and Freddy’s exploits are not referred to when Rowena talks of the past: there is only one Golden Age in Rowena’s memory.