The Forgotten Garden Part 33

Christian was digging a hole where the southern gate had been, trying to reach the bottom of exceptionally large sandstone footings, and Ca.s.sandra had been crouched by the northern wall for two hours, pulling bracken from what must once have been a garden bed. The task reminded her of childhood weekends spent helping Nell pull weeds from her garden in Paddington, and Ca.s.sandra felt infused by a comforting sense of familiarity. She'd a.s.sembled a decent pile of leaves and roots behind her, but her pace was slowing. It was difficult not to be distracted in the hidden garden. Sliding beneath the wall was like entering a place outside time. It was the walls that did it, she supposed, though the sense of enclosure went beyond the physical. Things sounded different in here: the birds were louder and the leaves whispered in the breeze. Smells were stronger-damp fertility, sweet apples-and the air was clearer. The longer she spent in the garden, the more certain Ca.s.sandra was that she'd been right. This garden wasn't sleeping; it was very much awake.

The sun moved slightly, casting shafts of streaky light through the creepers overhead, and a shower of tiny yellow confetti leaves rained down from a nearby tree. Watching them flutter, gold in the ribbons of light, Ca.s.sandra was seized by an overwhelming urge to sketch, to capture on paper this magical contrast between light and dark. Her fingers twitched, imagining the strokes necessary to render the shafts linear, the shading required to convey transparency. The desire to sketch caught her off guard.

"Tea break?" On the other side of the garden Christian tossed his shovel against the wall. Lifted the bottom of his faded T-s.h.i.+rt and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"Sounds good." She patted her gloved hands against her jeans to shake free the dirt and fern flecks, tried not to stare at his exposed stomach. "Your boil or mine?"

"Mine." He knelt in the patch they'd cleared in the middle of the garden and filled a saucepan with the remains of his water bottle.

Ca.s.sandra sat gingerly. A week of cleaning had left her calves stiff and her thighs sore. Not that she minded. Ca.s.sandra drew perverse pleasure from her aching body. It was the indisputable proof of her own physicality. She no longer felt invisible or fragile; she was heavier, far less likely to blow away on the breeze. And at night she fell quickly through the thick layers of sleep, woke to find night lying behind her in one solid dreamless drift.

"How's the maze been going?" she said as Christian set the saucepan on the little camping stove he'd brought. "Over at the hotel?"

"Not bad. Mike reckons we'll have it cleared by winter."

"Even with you spending so much time here?"

Christian smiled. "Predictably, Mike's got quite a lot to say about that." He tossed the residue of morning tea from the mugs and dangled a fresh bag over each rim.

"I hope you're not in trouble for helping me."

"Nothing I can't handle."

"I really appreciate how much you've done, Christian."

"It's nothing. I made a promise to help and I meant it."

"I know, and I'm really glad." She pulled her gloves off slowly. "All the same, I'll understand if you're too busy with other things."

"With my real job, you mean?" He laughed. "Don't worry. Mike's still getting his pound of flesh."

His real job. And there it was, the topic Ca.s.sandra had been wondering about but hitherto found herself unable to broach. Somehow, though, being in the garden today, she felt infused by an unusual spirit of come-what-may. A spirit something like Nell's. She drew an arc in the dirt with her heel. "Christian?"

"Ca.s.sandra?"

"I was just wondering"-she drew over the arc, added an echo beneath-"there's something I've been meaning to ask you, something Julia Bennett mentioned." She met his gaze but didn't hold it for long. "Why are you here in Tregenna, working for Michael, instead of being a doctor in Oxford?"

When Christian didn't answer she dared look at him again. His expression was difficult to read. He shrugged a little, smiled slightly. "Why are you here in Tregenna renovating a new house without your husband?"

Ca.s.sandra inhaled sharply, surprised as much as anything else. Without thinking, her fingers began their habitual worrying of her wedding band. "I...I'm..." Any number of evasive answers popped like bubbles on the tip of her tongue, then she heard a voice, not quite her own: "I don't have a husband. I did once, I just...There was an accident, Nick was-"

"Sorry. Look, you don't have to. I didn't mean to-"

"It's okay, I-"

"No. It's not." Christian ruffled his own hair, held out the palm of his hand. "I shouldn't have asked."

"It's all right. I asked first." And in a strange way that Ca.s.sandra couldn't articulate, even to herself, some small part of her was glad to have said the words. To have spoken Nick's name was a relief, made her feel less guilty somehow, that she was still here and he was not. That she was here, now, with Christian.

The saucepan was jiggling on the stove top, the water spitting. Christian tipped it sideways to fill the mugs, then tossed a teaspoon of sugar into each and stirred quickly. He handed one to Ca.s.sandra.

"Thanks." She wrapped her fingers around the warm tin and blew gently across its surface.

Christian took a sip, wincing as he burned his tongue.

Noisy silence stretched between them and Ca.s.sandra clutched at topical threads to weave the conversation back together. Caught none that seemed suitable.

Finally Christian spoke. "I think your grandma was lucky not to know her past."

Ca.s.sandra used the tip of her little finger to drag a fallen leaf fragment from her tea.

"It's a gift, don't you reckon, to be able to look forward and not back?"

She pretended interest in the rescued leaf. "In some ways."

"In most ways."

"Awful to forget the past entirely, though."

"Why?"

She glanced sideways, trying to ascertain whether or not he was being serious. No humor lurked in his expression. "Because then it would be like it never happened."

"But it did, nothing can change that."

"Yeah, but you wouldn't remember it."

"So?"

"So..." She flicked the leaf aside and shrugged lightly. "You need memories to keep things from the past alive."

"That's what I'm saying. Without memories everyone could just get on with it. Move on."

Ca.s.sandra's cheeks flared and she hid behind a gulp of tea. Then another. Christian was coaching her on the importance of relegating the past to history. She expected it from Nell and Ben, had learned to nod somberly when any of the aunts expressed similar sentiments, but this was different. She had been feeling so positive, so much lighter than usual, her outlines clear where they were usually smudged. She'd been enjoying herself. She wondered when precisely he'd pegged her as a lost cause in need of help. She felt embarra.s.sed and, more than that, disappointed somehow.

She took another sip of tea and sneaked a glance at Christian. His attention was occupied by a stick he was threading with dried autumn leaves, and his expression was difficult to read. Preoccupied, certainly, but more than that: distracted, distant, lonely.

"Christian-"

"I met Nell once, you know."

She was caught off guard. "My grandma, Nell?"

"I presume it was her. Can't think who else it would have been, and the dates seem about right. I was eleven, so it must've been 1975. I'd come up here to get away, and I was just disappearing under the wall when someone grabbed my foot. I didn't realize it was a person at first, I thought for a second that my brothers had been telling the truth when they said the cottage was haunted, that some ghost or witch was going to turn me into a toadstool." His lips twitched into a half-smile, and he crunched a leaf in his fist, sprinkling the debris on to the ground. "But it wasn't a ghost, it was an old woman with a strange accent and a sad face."

Ca.s.sandra pictured Nell's face. Had it been sad? Formidable, yes, not given to unnecessary warmth, but sad? She couldn't tell; its familiarity made such critique impossible.

"She had silver hair," he said, "tied up high."

"In a knot."

He nodded, smiled slightly, then tipped his mug upside down to empty the dregs. Tossed his threaded stick aside. "Are you any closer to solving her mystery for her?"

Ca.s.sandra exhaled slowly; there was definitely something unsettled about Christian this afternoon. His mood reminded her of the shafts of light filtering through the creepers. It was ungraspable, s.h.i.+mmering, changeable somehow. "Not really. Rose's sc.r.a.pbooks didn't contain the revelation I hoped they might."

"No entry ent.i.tled: 'Why Eliza Might Someday Take My Child'?" He smiled.

"Unfortunately not."

"At least you've had some interesting bedtime reading."

"If only I didn't fall asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow."

"It's the sea air," said Christian, standing up and fetching his shovel once again. "It's good for the soul."

That felt true enough. Ca.s.sandra stood, too. "Christian," she said, shaking her gloves, "about the sc.r.a.pbooks."

"Yeah?"

"There's something I hoped you might be able to help me with. A sort of mystery."

"Oh yeah?"

She glanced at him, a little wary given his earlier avoidance of the subject. "It's a medical question."

"Okay."

"Rose mentions some marks on her stomach. From what I can gather they're quite large, noticeable enough that they embarra.s.s her, and early on she has a couple of consultations about them with her doctor, Ebenezer Matthews."

He shrugged apologetically. "Skin wasn't really my specialty."

"What was?"

"Oncology. Does Rose give you anything more to go on? Color, size, type, quant.i.ty?"

Ca.s.sandra shook her head. "She wrote in euphemisms for the most part."

"Typical Victorian prudery." He walked the shovel back and forth on the ground while he thought. "They could be anything, really. Scars, pigmentation marks-does she mention any surgery?"

"Not that I can remember. What sort of surgery?"

He lifted one hand to the side. "Well, off the top of my head, it could have been appendicitis, her kidneys or lungs may have needed operating on." He raised his eyebrows. "Hydatids maybe. Is it likely she'd been near any farms?"

"There were farms on the estate."

"It's definitely the most common reason a Victorian child would've had abdominal surgery."

"What is it, exactly?"

"A parasite, tapeworm. It lives in dogs but has a part of its cycle in humans or sheep. It usually settles in the kidney or liver, but sometimes winds up in the lungs." He looked up at her. "It fits, but I'm afraid, short of asking her or finding more information in the sc.r.a.pbooks, I doubt you'll ever know for sure."

"I'll have another look this afternoon, see if I missed something."

"And I'll keep thinking about it."

"Thanks. But don't go to any trouble, it's really just my curiosity." She pulled her gloves on, locked the joins of her fingers together to tighten them.

Christian dug the shovel into the earth a few times. "There was too much death."

Ca.s.sandra looked at him.

"My job, oncology; it was too relentless. The patients, the families, the loss. I thought I'd be able to handle it, but it builds up, you know? Over time?"

Ca.s.sandra thought of Nell's last days, the ghastly sterile smell of the hospital, the cold, blank gaze of the walls.

"I was never cut out for it, really. I figured that much when I was still at university."

"You didn't think of changing your degree?"

"I didn't want to disappoint my mum."

"She wanted you to be a doctor?"

"I don't know." His eyes met hers. "She died when I was a kid."

And then Ca.s.sandra understood. "Cancer." Understood, too, why he was so eager to forget the past. "I'm so sorry, Christian."

He nodded, watched as a black bird flew low overhead. "Looks like rain. When the rooks swoop like that, there's rain coming." He smiled shyly, as if to apologize for the swift change of topic. "Meteorology has nothing on Cornish folklore."

Ca.s.sandra picked up her gardening fork. "I reckon we work another half-hour, then call it a day."

Christian looked at the ground suddenly and stubbed his boot against the earth. "You know, I was going to get a drink at the pub on the way home." He glanced at her. "I don't suppose-that is, I wonder if you'd like to come?"

"Sure," she heard herself say. "Why not?"

Christian smiled and his face seemed to relax. "Great. That's great."

A fresh, moist gust of salty breeze brought an elm leaf drifting down to land on Ca.s.sandra's head. She brushed it off and returned her attention to her bracken patch, dug the little gardening fork beneath a long thin root and tried to wrestle it from the ground. And she smiled to herself, though she wasn't quite sure why.

A BAND HAD BAND HAD been playing at the pub so they'd stayed and ordered pies and chips. Christian told self-deprecating stories about being back at home with his dad and stepmum, and Ca.s.sandra divulged some of Nell's eccentricities: her refusal to use a potato peeler because it couldn't trim as close as she could with a knife, her habit of adopting other people's cats, the way she'd had Ca.s.sandra's wisdom teeth set in silver and turned into a pendant. Christian had laughed, and the sound so pleased Ca.s.sandra that she found herself laughing, too. been playing at the pub so they'd stayed and ordered pies and chips. Christian told self-deprecating stories about being back at home with his dad and stepmum, and Ca.s.sandra divulged some of Nell's eccentricities: her refusal to use a potato peeler because it couldn't trim as close as she could with a knife, her habit of adopting other people's cats, the way she'd had Ca.s.sandra's wisdom teeth set in silver and turned into a pendant. Christian had laughed, and the sound so pleased Ca.s.sandra that she found herself laughing, too.

It was dark when he finally dropped her back at the hotel, the air thick with mist so that the car's headlights glowed yellow.

"Thank you," said Ca.s.sandra as she hopped out. "I had a good time." And she had. An unexpectedly good time. Her ghosts had been with her, as ever, but they hadn't sat so close.