The Rose Garden

‘Will be there,’ I’d corrected her, vaguely. ‘I haven’t gone anywhere, yet.’

I’d looked towards the sundial with its butterfly forever frozen on the brink of flight. Below them waved the ring of bright geraniums I’d helped Claire plant – the only mark I’d left upon Trelowarth in this time, and even that was passing. Soon the blooms would fade and nod and die and no one would remember them. ‘Aunt Claire,’ I’d said, asking the question she hadn’t yet answered, the one that most mattered to me.

‘Yes?’

‘Did she ever come back, this Grey Lady who vanished?’

Claire had turned to me fully that time, and our eyes had met. ‘No,’ she had told me, ‘she never came back.’

And I’d felt a small catch of emotion then, tight round my heart, feeling almost like hope.

I could feel it again, growing stronger as I covered my hair with the white linen pinner and turned around now to face Claire so she’d have the full effect. ‘There.’

‘Very nice.’ Claire looked me up and down, admiring the lines of the dress. ‘He chose that for you, did he? Clever man. The colour’s lovely.’

The green had a soothing effect on my nerves as I lifted the skirts to adjust them and took a look round to make sure I’d done everything. Both of my suitcases sat neatly packed on the furthermost bed. ‘I suppose,’ I said slowly, ‘I’m ready.’

We each took a suitcase, and carried them down the short way to the first landing, setting them down while I sprang the stiff panel that hid the old priest’s hole. ‘You’re sure this will be OK?’

‘Darling, it’s been here for centuries now without anyone knowing. It’s quite the safest place to leave things,’ she said. ‘Better than a cupboard.’

To prove it she tucked one case neatly away in the narrow dark space, taking care not to pull at the delicate fabric of Ann’s faded gowns that we’d hung in here earlier, next to the coat that had been the man Peter’s, and Daniel’s silk banyan that I’d first brought back. I slid the second case into its place and positioned Felicity’s pisky on top of it, leaving him there with his all-knowing smile to watch over things as I stepped back a pace, letting the panel swing closed again.

Someday, I thought, when Trelowarth House fell to the elements, some archaeologist might stumble over those twenty-first century cases of clothes sharing space with an old bloodstained coat and the banyan and two eighteenth-century gowns, and might wonder about them, and try to form theories explaining the puzzle of how they had come to be there in one place … but I’d lay odds that none of the theories would ever come close to the truth.

And the walls held their silence, no whispers this evening as I followed Claire down the staircase and through the bright kitchen and out the back door with the dogs coming, too, keeping close to our heels in a tail-wagging pack, ever curious, seeking excitement.

They seemed to find it in the scents that rode the cooling night breeze blowing shoreward from the sea, and with their noses bouncing happily from air to ground and back again they snuffed their way around the yard, some venturing with interest to the stable building doorstep, no doubt hoping that their master had returned.

I stayed with Claire, and went no further than the honeysuckle vine that climbed the wall beside the kitchen window. There was light here slanting out across the softness of the grass and casting shadows through the vine’s leaves in a finely tangled net that made a pattern on my green silk gown.

I asked Claire, ‘Are you sure we’re not too late?’

‘Darling,’ she said. ‘You can’t possibly miss it, there’s no need to worry.’

I realised she was right, that while for me the whole event had not yet taken place, in Claire’s time it was something done and finished with, belonging to the past; the Moving Finger had already written what must happen.

But that knowledge, reassuring as it might be, didn’t make me feel less nervous.

‘Yes, but when—?’ I left the question hanging, because just then one of the dogs raised its head and gave a shortened bark that brought the other dogs to quick attention, all their noses turned in the direction of the road.

Like them, I heard the footsteps on the gravel drive. Claire did, as well.

‘Quite soon, I should imagine,’ was her answer as she turned to greet our visitor as he came round the corner of the house. ‘Good evening, Oliver.’

And in that single moment I knew everything she’d told me had been true.

Oliver came round the side of the house and glanced up at Claire’s greeting.

‘Hello,’ he said, fending the happily leaping dogs off with one hand as I saw him both notice my gown and, with typical nonchalance, choose not to comment beyond a quick nod and a cheerful, ‘Nice frock.’ He stepped closer and flashed his endearing smile. ‘I thought with everyone gone off to Southport, you might be in need of some company.’

Claire said, ‘I see you’ve brought wine.’

There was something about how she said that, some note in her voice that reminded me this was a night she herself must have waited a very long time for – this night when she’d finally be able to sit down and talk, really talk, to the man who would become her friend and confidant; the man who would one day be Susan’s husband, and the man whom she would meet again some sixty years from now, when he was old, and she was young.