The Forgotten Garden Part 4

Nell. That's what they were calling her now, after Lil's mum, Eleanor. Well, they had to call her something, didn't they? The funny little thing still couldn't tell them her name. Whenever Lil quizzed her, she widened those big blue eyes and said she didn't remember.

After the first few weeks, Lil stopped asking. Truth be told, she was just as happy not to know. Didn't want to imagine Nell with any name other than the one they'd given her. Nell. It suited her so well; no one could say it didn't. Almost as if she'd been born to it.

They'd done their best to find out who she was, where she belonged. That's all anyone could ask of them. And although initially she'd told herself that they were just minding Nell for a time, keeping her safe until her people came for her, with every day that pa.s.sed Lil became more certain that there were no such people.

They'd fallen into an easy routine, the three of them. Breakfast together in the morning, then Hughie would leave for work and she and Nell would get started on the house. Lil found she liked having a second shadow, enjoyed showing Nell things, explaining how they worked, and why. Nell was a big one for asking why-why did the sun hide at night, why didn't the fire flames leap out of the grate, why didn't the river get bored and run the other way?-and Lil loved supplying answers, watching as understanding dawned on Nell's little face. For the first time in her life Lil felt useful, needed, whole.

Things were better with Hughie, too. The sheet of tension that the past few years had strung between them was beginning to slip away. They'd stopped being so d.a.m.ned polite, tripping over their carefully chosen words like two strangers drafted into close quarters. They'd even started to laugh again sometimes, easy laughter that came unforced like it had before.

As for Nell, she took to life with Hughie and Lil like a duck, to the Mary River. It didn't take long for the neighborhood kids to discover there was someone new in their midst, and Nell perked up something tremendous at the prospect of other children to play with. Young Beth Reeves was over the fence at some point every day now. Lil loved the sound of the two girls running about together. She'd been waiting so long, had so looked forward to a time when little voices might squeal and laugh in her own backyard.

And Nell was a most imaginative child. Lil often heard her describing long and involved games of make-believe. The flat, open yard became a magical forest in Nell's imagination, with brambles and mazes, even a cottage on the edge of a cliff. Lil recognized the places Nell described from the book of children's fairy tales they'd found in the white suitcase. Lil and Hughie had been taking it in turns to read the stories to Nell at night. Lil had thought them too frightening at first, but Hughie had convinced her otherwise. Nell, for her part, didn't seem bothered a whit.

From where she stood, watching at the kitchen window, Lil could tell that's what they were playing today. Beth was listening, wide-eyed, as Nell led her through an imaginary maze, flitting about in her white dress, sun rays turning her long red plaits to gold.

Nell would miss Beth when they moved to Brisbane, but she'd be sure to make new friends. Children did. And the move was important. There was only so long Lil and Hughie could tell people that Nell was a niece from up north. Sooner or later the neighbors were going to start wondering why she hadn't gone home. How much longer she'd be staying.

No, it was clear to Lil. The three of them needed to make a fresh start somewhere they weren't already known. A big city where people wouldn't ask questions.

SEVEN.

BRISBANE, 2005.

IT was a morning in early spring and Nell had been dead just over a week. A brisk wind wove through the bushes, twirling the leaves so that their pale undersides fluttered towards the sun. Like children thrust suddenly into the spotlight, flitting between nerves and self-importance. was a morning in early spring and Nell had been dead just over a week. A brisk wind wove through the bushes, twirling the leaves so that their pale undersides fluttered towards the sun. Like children thrust suddenly into the spotlight, flitting between nerves and self-importance.

Ca.s.sandra's mug of tea had long grown cold. She'd set it on the cement ledge after her last sip and forgotten it was there. A brigade of busy ants whose way had been thwarted was now forced to take evasive action, up the mug's edge and through the handle to the other side.

Ca.s.sandra didn't notice them, though. Sitting on a rickety chair in the backyard, beside the old laundry, her attention was on the rear wall of the house. It needed a coat of paint. Hard to believe five years had pa.s.sed already. The experts recommended that a weatherboard house should be repainted every seven, but Nell hadn't held with such convention. In all the time Ca.s.sandra had lived with her grandmother, the house had never received a full coat. Nell was fond of saying that she wasn't in the business of spending good money to give the neighbors a fresh view.

The back wall, however, was a different matter-as Nell said, it was the only one they ever spent any time looking at. So while the sides and front peeled beneath the fierce Queensland sun, the back was a thing of beauty. Every five years the paint charts would come out and a great deal of time and energy would be spent debating the merits of a new color. In the years Ca.s.sandra had been around it had been turquoise, lilac, vermilion, teal. Once it had even hosted a mural of sorts, unsanctioned though it might have been...

Ca.s.sandra had been nineteen and life was sweet. She was in the middle of her second year at the College of Art, her bedroom had morphed into a studio so that she had to climb across her drawing board to reach her bed each night and she was dreaming of a move to Melbourne to study art history.

Nell was not so keen on the plan. "You can study art history at Queensland Uni," she said whenever the subject was raised. "No need to drag yourself down south."

"I can't stay living at home forever, Nell."

"Who said anything about forever? Just wait a little while, find your feet here first."

Ca.s.sandra pointed to her Doc-clad feet. "Found 'em."

Nell didn't smile. "Melbourne's an expensive city to live in and I can't afford to pay your rent down there."

"I'm not picking up gla.s.ses at the Paddo Tav for fun, you know."

"Pah, with what they pay, you can put off applying to Melbourne for another decade."

"You're right."

Nell c.o.c.ked her chin and raised a dubious eyebrow, wondering where such sudden capitulation was leading.

"I'll never save enough money myself." Ca.s.sandra bit her bottom lip, arresting a hopeful smile. "If only there were someone willing to spot me a loan, a loving person who wanted to help me follow my dreams..."

Nell picked up the box of china she was taking to the antique center. "I'm not going to stand around here and let you paint me into a corner, my girl."

Ca.s.sandra sensed a hopeful fissure in the once-solid refusal. "We'll talk about it later?"

Nell rolled her eyes skywards. "I fear we will. And then again and again and again." She huffed a sigh, signaling that the subject was, for now at least, closed. "Have you got everything you need to do the back wall?"

"Check."

"You won't forget to use the new brush on the boards? I don't want to stare at loose bristles for the next five years."

"Yes, Nell. And just to get things straight, I dip the brush into the paint tin before putting it on the boards, right?"

"Cheeky girl."

When Nell arrived home from the antique center that afternoon, she rounded the corner of the house and stopped still, appraising the wall in its s.h.i.+ny new coat.

Ca.s.sandra stepped back and pressed her lips together to stop from laughing. Waited.

The vermilion was striking, but it was the black detailing she'd added over in the far corner that her grandmother was staring at. The likeness was uncanny: Nell sitting on her favorite chair, holding aloft a cup of steaming tea.

"I seem to have painted you into a corner, Nell. Didn't mean to, I just got carried away."

Nell's expression was unreadable.

"I'm going to do me next, sitting right beside you. That way, even when I'm in Melbourne, you'll remember that we're still a pair."

Nell's lips had trembled a little then. She'd shaken her head and set down the box she'd brought back from the stall. Heaved a sigh. "You're a cheeky girl, there's no doubt about that," she'd said. And then she'd smiled despite herself and cupped Ca.s.sandra's face in her hands. "But you're my cheeky girl and I wouldn't have you any other way..."

A noise, and the past was chased away, dispersed into the shadows like smoke by the brighter, louder present. Ca.s.sandra blinked and wiped her eyes. Far above her a plane droned, a white speck in a sea of bright blue. Impossible to imagine there were people inside, talking and laughing and eating. Some of them looking down just as she was looking up.

Another noise, nearer now. Shuffling footsteps.

"h.e.l.lo there, young Ca.s.sandra." A familiar figure appeared at the side of the house, stood for a moment catching his breath. Ben had once been tall, but time had a way of molding people into shapes they themselves no longer recognized, and his was now the body of a garden gnome. His hair was white, his beard wiry and his ears inexplicably red.

Ca.s.sandra smiled, genuinely pleased to see him. Nell was not one for friends and had never hidden her distaste for most other humans, their neurotic compulsion for the acquisition of allies. But she and Ben had seen eye to eye. He was a fellow trader at the antique center, a one-time lawyer who'd turned his hobby into a job when his wife died, his firm suggested gently it might be time to retire and his purchase of secondhand furniture threatened to squeeze him out of home.

When Ca.s.sandra was growing up he'd been a father figure of sorts, offering wisdom she'd appreciated and disdained in equal measure, but since she'd been back living with Nell, he'd become her friend, too.

Ben pulled a faded deck chair from beside the concrete laundry tub and sat down carefully. His knees had been damaged as a young man in the Second War and gave him grief aplenty, especially when the weather was turning.

He winked over the rim of his round gla.s.ses. "You've got the right idea. Beaut spot, this, nice and sheltered."

"It was Nell's spot." Her voice sounded strange to her ears and she wondered vaguely how long it had been since she'd spoken aloud to anyone. Not since dinner at Phyllis's place a week before, she realized.

"That'd be right. Count on her to know just where to sit."

Ca.s.sandra smiled. "Would you like a cuppa?"

"Love one."

She went through the back door into the kitchen and set the kettle on the stove. The water was still warm from when she'd boiled it earlier.

"So, how've you been keeping?"

She shrugged. "I've been all right." Came back to sit on the concrete step near his chair.

Ben pressed pale lips together, smiled slightly so that his moustache tangled with his beard. "Has your mum been in touch?"

"She sent a card."

"Well, then..."

"Said she would've liked to make it down but she and Len were busy. Caleb and Marie-"

"Of course. Keep you busy, teenagers."

"Not teenagers anymore. Marie just turned twenty-one."

Ben whistled. "Time flies."

The kettle began shrilling.

Ca.s.sandra went back inside and drowned the teabag, watched as it bled the water brown. An irony that Lesley had turned out to be such a conscientious mother second time around. So much in life came down to timing.

She dribbled in some milk, wondering vaguely whether it was still okay, when she'd purchased it. Before Nell died, surely? The label was stamped 14 September. Had that date pa.s.sed? She wasn't sure. It didn't smell sour. She carried the mug out and handed it to Ben.

"I'm sorry...the milk..."

He took a sip. "Best tea I've had all day."

He eyed her a moment as she sat down, seemed about to say something but thought better of it. He cleared his throat. "Ca.s.s, I've come on official business, as well as social."

That death should be followed by official business was no surprise and yet she felt dizzy, caught off guard.

"Nell had me make out her will. You know how she was, said she didn't like the idea of divulging her personal affairs to a stranger."

Ca.s.sandra nodded. That was Nell.

Ben pulled an envelope from the pocket inside his blazer. Age had blunted its edges and turned white to cream.

"She made it some time ago." He squinted at the envelope. "In 1981, to be exact." He paused, as if waiting for her to fill the silence. When she didn't, he continued: "Pretty straightforward for the most part." He withdrew the contents but didn't look at them, leaned forward so his forearms rested on his knees. Nell's will dangled from his right hand. "Your grandmother left you everything, Ca.s.s."

Ca.s.sandra was not surprised. Touched, perhaps, and suddenly, perversely, lonely, but not surprised. For who else was there? Not Lesley, certainly. Though Ca.s.sandra had stopped blaming her mother long ago, Nell had never been able to forgive. To abandon a child, she had once said to someone, when she thought Ca.s.sandra couldn't hear, was an act so cold, so careless, it refused forgiveness.

"There's the house, of course, and some money in her savings account. All of her antiques." He hesitated, eyed Ca.s.sandra, as if gauging her preparedness for something yet to come. "And there's one thing more." He glanced at the papers. "Last year, after your grandmother was diagnosed, she asked me to come for tea one morning."

Ca.s.sandra remembered. Nell had told her when she brought in breakfast that Ben was visiting and that she needed to see him in private. She'd asked Ca.s.sandra to catalogue some books for her, up at the antique center though it had been years since Nell had taken an active role in the stall.

"She gave me something that day," he said. "A sealed envelope. Told me I was to put it with her will and open it only if...when...well, you know."

Ca.s.sandra s.h.i.+vered lightly as a sudden cool breeze brushed across her arms.

Ben waved his hand. The papers fluttered but he didn't speak.

"What is it?" she said, a familiar kernel of anxiety heavy in her stomach. "You can tell me, Ben. I'll be okay."

Ben looked up, surprised by her tone. Confounded her by laughing. "No need to look so worried, Ca.s.s, it's nothing bad. Quite the opposite really." He considered for a moment. "More a mystery than a calamity."

Ca.s.sandra exhaled; his talk of mysteries did little to relieve her nervousness.

"I did as she said. Put the envelope aside and didn't open it till yesterday. Could've knocked me down with a feather when I saw." He smiled. "Inside were the deeds to another house."

"Whose house?"

"Nell's house."

"Nell doesn't have another house."

"It would appear she does, or did. And now it's yours."

Ca.s.sandra didn't like surprises, their suddenness, their randomness. Where once she'd known how to surrender herself to the unexpected, now the very suggestion heralded a surge of instant fear, her body's learned response to change. She picked up a dry leaf lying by her shoe, folded it in half and in half again as she thought.

Nell hadn't mentioned another house, not in all the time they'd lived together, while Ca.s.sandra was growing up and since she'd been back. Why not? Why would she have kept such a thing secret? And what could she have wanted with it? An investment? Ca.s.sandra had heard people in the coffee shops on Latrobe Terrace talking about rising property prices, investment portfolios, but Nell? Nell had always poked fun at the inner-city yuppies who sh.e.l.led out small fortunes for the tiny wooden workers' cottages of Paddington.

Besides, Nell'd reached retirement age long ago. If this house were an investment, why hadn't she sold it? Used the money to live on? Dealing in antiques had its rewards, but financial remuneration was not chief among them, not these days. Nell and Ca.s.sandra made enough to live on but not much besides. There'd been times when an investment would've come in pretty handy, yet Nell had never breathed a word.

"This house," Ca.s.sandra said finally, "where is it? Is it nearby?"

Ben shook his head, smiled bemusedly. "That's where this whole thing gets really really mysterious. The other house is in England." mysterious. The other house is in England."

"England?"

"The UK, Europe, other side of the world."

"I know where England is."

"Cornwall, to be precise, a village called Tregenna. I've only got the deeds to go by, but it's listed as 'Cliff Cottage.' From the address, I'd guess it was part of a larger country estate originally. I could find out if you like."

"But why would she...? How could she...?" Ca.s.sandra exhaled. "When did she buy it?"