The Sea Garden Read online

  Johnnie is back and she turns to him. ‘You remember the Penhaligons, don’t you? Juliet and Mike? I’ve met their granddaughter, Jess. She’s coming to stay with me.’

  There is an odd little silence, then Johnnie sits down, bending to pat Flossie, again.

  ‘They went out to Australia, didn’t they?’ he says. ‘He transferred to the Australian Navy. We remember Mike Penhaligon, don’t we, Mother?’

  ‘I remember him very well.’ Her voice is thin and cool.

  ‘Jess is really looking forward to meeting any friends of Mike and Juliet’s. Tom thought it might be fun if she were to meet you, too.’

  ‘You must bring her over,’ Johnnie says. ‘What’s her name? Jess? How amazing. I think Juliet and Mike met at one of our parties. What fun.’

  His voice lacks its usual warmth and when Kate looks at his mother she sees that the elderly woman’s expression is an odd one: bleak and remote. She looks beyond the walls of the bar to a scene only she can remember; hearing other voices in another time.

  Kate suddenly recalls that Al died in a tragic sailing accident when he was still young, and she is seized by a sense of foreboding.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to be a nuisance,’ she says quickly. ‘And I don’t know how long she can stay…’

  ‘Of course you must both come to lunch,’ says old Lady T. ‘Johnnie will arrange it. Kate is moving into Chapel Street, Johnnie. Write down her telephone number. I’ve got a pen here somewhere.’

  The coffee arrives as she scrabbles in a capacious handbag, and Kate is able to hide her surprise at such a positive invitation from her old detractor. They talk of Jess, and Kate explains again the girl’s history, wondering why she still feels so uneasy, and presently they part.

  TAMAR

  Sophie stands by the balustrade in the sea garden watching Freddy Grenvile rowing across the river from Cargreen. It is typical of Freddy, she thinks, to row across rather than to use the outboard motor. Even now, in his sixties, he is strong and fit; he loves to sail, to ski, to play tennis. Behind his small terraced cottage the courtyard will be full of bits and pieces in various stages of repair. He is always mending, building, and he and Johnnie are at present restoring an old naval cutter down in the boathouse. Below her, Sophie can see Alice moored against the stone wall of the old quay, so that she can be leaned against the wall as the tide drops, ready to be scrubbed down. Freddy is on his way to join the scrubbing party.

  He pulls strongly, heading against the tide, which is on the ebb. As he glances over his shoulder Sophie raises a hand to him and he pauses to return the salute before he settles again to his stroke. She rests her elbows on the balustrade, relaxing in the sun. Between them, she and Johnnie and Freddy – with a bit of help from a couple in the village – keep the whole place together and a strong bond of trust and affection has grown between the three of them.

  Way back, right at the beginning, she imagined herself in love with Freddy. She didn’t care that he was twenty years older than she was, in his early forties; he was tall and lean and very good-looking, and he and Johnnie always had great times together. She crewed for both of them, went to the pub with them, and they were such good company that the pain of being so brutally dismissed by her ex-lover slowly eased and her self-esteem gradually reasserted itself. Nothing had come of that early infatuation. Freddy had been posted to the Far East and for the next two years he’d spent only a few weeks of leave at his little cottage across the river in Cargreen. When he got back from Hong Kong he gave her one of his beautifully detailed little sketches; this time it was of a three-masted junk. It was a warm gesture that implied affection, that she was one of the family, but nothing more.

  Just as well, Sophie thinks now, that her infatuation was nipped firmly in the bud. Much better to have this easygoing relationship with both men than the emotional muddle that goes with being in love. Apart from the disadvantage of the twenty-year age gap, Freddy probably wasn’t good husband material either. His marriage to a divorcee with two children failed and she returned to her first husband taking the children with her, but, according to Johnnie, Freddy wasn’t overly distressed by it.

  ‘I don’t think he’s particularly home and hearth, our Fred,’ he said. ‘He’s the original free spirit and I think he’s quite happy the way he is.’

  And Sophie is happy with it, too. She strolls across the lawn to the boathouse and waits for Freddy to haul the dinghy up onto the slip.

  ‘Johnnie and Rowena have gone into Tavistock,’ she says. ‘They won’t be long. The library has got some books Johnnie ordered, to do with his research on the Tamar. Rowena took a sudden whim to go with him. Come and have some coffee.’

  They wander companionably across the lawn, round to the back of the house and into the kitchen. Freddy leans against the sink, hands in the pockets of his old shorts. He wears an ancient, faded Aertex shirt and a pair of plimsolls: his scrubbing-down rig. It’s rather typical of Fred, thinks Sophie, that he still manages to look elegant in a rakish, sexy kind of way.

  ‘Johnnie’s chosen the perfect weekend,’ he says. ‘It’ll be a good afternoon for it. The tide’s just right.’

  ‘I’ll come and give a hand after lunch,’ she offers. ‘And Will’s got a Sunday out tomorrow so he can help too. He’ll like that.’

  Young Will, Louisa’s eldest, is now at Mount House, the prep school just outside Tavistock. It is his turn to be cherished on Sundays out and exeats when he can’t get back home to Geneva. He misses his parents and his three little sisters, but his grandfather – ‘Grando’, as Will calls Johnnie – and Sophie do their best to keep him busy and happy. They go to the school plays and concerts, to rugby and cricket matches, and Sophie encourages him to bring his school friends down to the Tamar with him at weekends.

  Freddy smiles at her approvingly. He’s very fond of Sophie. He likes her directness, her sense of humour. He’d guessed at the infatuation, was flattered by it, but relieved that nothing came of it and that Sophie was clearly unscathed. His one attempt at marriage had shown that he hadn’t the temperament for it and he had no intention of risking it again.

  ‘Will’s very much like Johnnie was at that age,’ he says. ‘Rather serious and mad about boats. I wonder if he’ll follow the family tradition and join the navy.’

  Sophie edges Freddy along so that she can get to the sink and he moves aside and picks up his mug.

  ‘It’s his ambition at the moment, but he’s only ten,’ she says.

  Freddy thinks about it. By the time he was ten his father had been killed in the war and his mother had gratefully accepted her cousin Dickie’s offer of the cottage in Cargreen. Dickie had generously taken responsibility for young Fred’s education so that he and Johnnie and Al had grown up more like brothers than second cousins. It had been taken for granted that all three of them would join the navy as a matter of course. And so they had. When they passed out from Dartmouth, Al and Johnnie had joined the submarine service like their father before them, but Fred had been unable to face being shut in a metal tube under the water, all packed together like sardines, and he’d joined the surface fleet.

  ‘A skimmer,’ Al had said derisively. ‘Poor little Fred. Always littlest, least and last, but never mind. I suppose someone’s got to do it.’

  Al considered himself to be one of the élite: first, best, special – but Al had died. For a brief moment, Freddy is transported back to the past; he recalls the sound of the wind and the snap of the sail, raised voices and then the cry in the darkness of ‘Man overboard!’

  ‘Are you OK?’ asks Sophie. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  And so he has. ‘I’m fine,’ he says. ‘Is that the car?’

  Johnnie comes into the kitchen and drops a pile of books on the table. He looks at Fred, an odd, warning look, as if he is preparing him for something.

  ‘Hi,’ says Sophie. ‘The tide should have dropped enough. I think we’ll be able to start any time now. Go and change, Johnnie. Shorts and
gumboots rig. It’s quite hot out there.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says abstractedly. ‘Yes, of course. I’ll just go and have a quick look at her. Coming, Fred?’

  He goes out and Fred, raising his eyebrows at Sophie, follows him. Sophie stands for a moment, puzzled, and then shrugs. She’ll change too, into her shorts and a halter top, but first she’ll just check on Rowena.

  She finds the older woman in the morning room; Rowena’s favourite place. She stands by the table, staring at nothing in particular, her whole concentration inward as if she is seeing other scenes and hearing other voices. Sophie sees that she is holding a silver-framed photograph and, even at this angle, Sophie recognizes the frame and knows that it is a photograph of Al: Rowena’s first-born, her favourite.

  Sophie comes closer and Rowena glances up, startled out of her preoccupation.

  ‘What is it?’ she asks sharply, as if Sophie is a servant – but Sophie is used to Rowena and merely smiles at her.

  ‘I’m going to help the boys scrub down Alice,’ she says. ‘I wondered if you need anything before I go.’

  Rowena shakes her head. ‘We had coffee in the Bedford,’ she says. It seems as if she might say something else, something that is causing some kind of excitement, but decides against it. She nods to Sophie, as if to dismiss her, and then adds, ‘Thank you,’ as an afterthought.

  Sophie grins as she goes out.

  ‘Grandmother is simply the end,’ Louisa has said on numerous occasions. ‘No wonder the children call her the granny-monster. I’m really sorry, Sophes.’

  But Sophie doesn’t mind. The Trehearnes are as dear to her now as her own family. From those early days, coming here from university with Louisa, her best and dearest friend, and the strange yet simple way in which that last holiday after her abortion morphed into a job, she adopted this family: Old Dickie, a bit confused mentally by then and crippled with arthritis, and Rowena, sharp as a tack, autocratic and demanding; Johnnie, kind and warm and generous, with a wife just as sweet …

  As she climbs the elegant curving staircase Sophie sighs, remembering poor Meg’s long battle with cancer; a battle that had already started when she, Sophie, first came to stay at the house on the Tamar. Very quickly she’d seen how she could be useful, to repay some of the kindness they’d shown her.

  Perhaps, thinks Sophie now, as she drags off her jeans and looks for her shorts, perhaps it is easier to be patient, willing, less judgemental, with those who are not related to us; they are not as critical as our own kin; they value us more highly and, when we are very young, we can show off a little to them and try out roles so as to see ourselves more clearly without being mocked or humiliated. She’d done her serious growing up with the Trehearnes.

  ‘I don’t mind you telling your mum about the abortion,’ she said to Louisa; somehow she knew even then that Louisa’s parents wouldn’t condemn her.

  Meg was sympathetic and warm, whereas her own mother was shocked and angry. It was a relief to stay here, on the Tamar; to be cherished, and to cherish in her turn. When Johnnie was posted to the Ministry of Defence in London she was glad to stay with the frail Meg whilst keeping a watching brief on the still fiercely independent Rowena and dear old Dickie. Then Dickie died, followed not long afterwards by Meg, and Johnnie was glad to have her support and company and strength.

  And all the while she was growing; discovering that she was very happy to nurture and support this family, that she valued her freedom and independence and that she had no wish to become inextricably linked with one single man. She was not particularly romantic or maternal. Slowly she understood that, while the care of the Trehearnes fulfilled her nurturing needs and gave her companionship, there were young men who were quite ready to minister to any physical requirements. Perhaps that early disastrous relationship, culminating in betrayal and abortion, had cured her of any desire for a long-term intimate relationship.

  Sophie pulls on a halter top, ties a spotted handkerchief over her short fair hair and goes down to join Johnnie and Fred.

  * * *

  Rowena continues to stand, holding the photograph of Al, staring into the past at long-vanished scenes. She sees him dancing with Juliet at the Christmas Ball on HMS Drake. They are dancing to ‘California Dreaming’, a slow smooch, circling in the shadows at the edge of the floor. Al’s eyes are closed and he’s holding her much too tightly; the silky chiffon skirt of Juliet’s long, pale ball gown floats and clings to her partner’s dark uniform. Mike’s at the bar, getting the drinks in, but he turns to watch them and his rather foolish, half-drunken expression hardens into watchfulness.

  She hears Juliet’s voice, strained and desperate, whispering just outside these morning-room windows during a party one warm spring evening. ‘I should never have married him, I know that now. I thought I was in love with him. I really did. How was I to know? What shall we do?’ and the low, murmuring response: ‘We must be very careful.’

  She remembers Juliet as a house guest, staying for a week whilst Mike is at sea.

  ‘You don’t want to stay in that poky flat in Plymouth in this wonderful weather,’ Rowena says. ‘Come and spend a few days with us. Johnnie’s at sea but Al’s got a few days’ leave…’

  Juliet, slipping away to the sail loft, along the river bank, and, after a while, the shadowy figure of Al following her.

  The last scene is the most important: the Midsummer’s Eve party. The sea garden is strung about with fairy lights, the table in the summerhouse laid with delicious food and wine, and Johnnie and Fred are put in charge of the record player. The sail loft has been turned into a dormitory for the young single men – only a very few of the couples are married – and the girls stay in the house, sharing bedrooms.

  The sea garden is a magical place. Reflections jitter and dance on the smooth black surface of the water; shadowy figures dance or lean against the balustrade beneath Circe’s imposing figure. The tall lavender hedges are pale, cloudy shapes, their scent still lingering on the warm air.

  As she approaches the summerhouse with a tray of cream jellies, Rowena becomes aware of the whispering. The first voice is urgent, demanding; the other is frightened.

  Rowena steps back into the shadows, watching the two people behind the summerhouse. Juliet’s dress is in disarray, her hair loosened. Al’s face is buried against her throat but her face is twisted away from his, her hands on his shoulders.

  ‘Listen,’ she is saying, still in that desperate whisper. ‘Please just listen to me. I’m pregnant, Al. Just for God’s sake, listen…’

  And then Dickie comes across the lawn from the house, calling out cheerfully, carrying some bottles, and Rowena sees Al’s head turn sharply, and both figures freeze into immobility and silence. She slips quickly away, joining Dickie a few moments later, and then Juliet appears alone, pinning up her hair and smiling – but there is no sign of Al.

  Now, standing in the morning room, holding Al’s photograph, Rowena remembers how she waited during the weeks that followed; waited for some word from Al: an explanation of Juliet’s failed marriage, perhaps, or of how much he loved her. She was so certain that Juliet would leave Mike; so sure that the child was Al’s. She desperately wanted them for him: Juliet and the baby. She was sorry for Mike, of course she was, but she could see how Juliet had been carried away by all the glamour of their early meetings and it wasn’t until she’d come to know Al that she realized that she’d married the wrong man. They were too young, she and Mike, and all those ladies nights’ and parties and summer balls had been too romantic.

  Perhaps it was wrong of her to invite Juliet that spring, knowing that the girl was regretting her marriage, falling in love – but no … Rowena shakes her head. She sees again Juliet slipping away from the house, disappearing towards the sail loft or the river bank, and then, a short while later, Al following her to the trysting place. How can she regret that joy they shared when a few months later Al had died in a tragic sailing accident?

  Or had it been an accid
ent? She’d never be certain; never be absolutely sure that Mike hadn’t knocked Al overboard. Perhaps they’d quarrelled and Al had told him the truth and Mike had simply lashed out. Perhaps Mike guessed and had accused Al. Either way, even in the first fresh agony of grief, she wasn’t able to blame or accuse Mike. He’d described how a squall hit the boat and Al was knocked over by the swinging of the boom; and both Johnnie and Fred asserted that Mike searched and searched, shouting Al’s name in the darkness, refusing to give up until the dawn broke and they stared at the empty sea.

  Mike was posted to a nuclear submarine running out of Faslane and Juliet went with him. The baby boy, Patrick, was born and Rowena’s heart yearned for a sight of him but Juliet stayed away. Johnnie saw Mike occasionally, Dickie ran into him at Northwood, and then they heard that they’d gone to Australia. From a distance Rowena managed to keep a watching brief for a short while but there was little news: Mike’s promotions, no more babies.

  ‘It seems,’ her confidante in Australia wrote, ‘that poor old Mike’s been firing blanks. That’s what nuclear submarines do for you, apparently. Lucky he managed Pat…’

  And so the years passed and, though she never recovered from Al’s death, she believed that at least she’d come to terms with it until earlier, in the Bedford, when Kate had said: ‘You remember the Penhaligons, don’t you?’ and all the longing and hope and pain had returned, fresh and vivid.

  Now, Rowena gently places the photograph back in its place. It was odd that Johnnie was so quiet driving home in the car, slightly edgy when she’d pressed him about inviting Jess to lunch: not like him at all. After all, Johnnie is very hospitable; he loves a party. However, he has promised to telephone Kate at the weekend and make a date. Rowena checks that she has the piece of paper with the telephone number safe in her bag. She will remind him to make the call – and if he is dilatory she will do it herself.

  TAVISTOCK