The Rose Garden

‘They did.’

Susan prompted, ‘You have to tell the story, it’s romantic. Especially the part where your grandfather takes off his clothes.’

Claire smiled. ‘He did no such thing.’

‘He did. He took off his shirt.’

‘He was being a gentleman.’

Felicity found that amusing. ‘That’s what they all say.’

Claire went on, ‘It had started to rain, and my grandmother’s group – she had come down to Cornwall with some of her friends, from St Davids, in Wales – they got caught in it, soaked to the skin, so they ducked into the tea room to get warm. And my grandfather was working there that day, he was a plumber, and he saw her and was smitten.’

Susan picked up the tale. ‘So he went straight over to her table and whipped off his shirt, and―’

‘Nothing quite so dramatic.’ Claire’s wry glance was indulgent. ‘He saw that she was shivering, and offered her his own dry shirt. A gentleman,’ she said again. ‘Although, in fairness, Gran always suspected that he only did it to show off his chest. He was a well-built man.’

‘What was the name of the tea room?’ asked Susan.

‘The Cloutie Tree.’

Perfect for Cornwall, I thought. ‘Cloutie trees’ were a Celtic tradition, most often a thorn tree that grew by a holy well, on which the faithful tied ‘clouts’, bits of cloth they’d first dipped in the water, to take away sickness and wounds. As the cloth wore away to the elements, the ailment supposedly healed. There was one of these trees at St Non’s, in fact, not all that far from here, only the pilgrims who came to the holy well there were more likely to wish for things other than health when they tied their bright strips of cloth onto the tree. I’d once wished for a pony, myself, though I’d never received one.

‘The Cloutie Tree Tea Room.’ Susan tried the name herself, and seemed to like it. ‘I believe I’ll call mine that, as well. What do you think, Claire?’

Claire looked as though her thoughts were somewhere far away. I saw her pull them back again, and find a smile. ‘I think it would be lovely, Susan. Very fitting.’

She touched the sundial at her side with almost wistful fingers and then turned and went to put her tools away.

It struck me as I watched her walk across the wild back garden that Claire, like me, had lost her family young. Her grandparents, her parents – they’d have all been gone, as mine had now gone, by the time she reached her twenties, since according to my parents she had been alone when she had married Mark and Susan’s father. And except for Mark and Susan, she was now alone again.

It was the way of things, I thought. We never knew what time would bring us. Looking down, I watched the shadow shift a fraction on the sundial.

Counting, not by months, but moments, as the poem said. I almost envied that bronze butterfly, content to live completely in the present, unconcerned with what had gone before. What might have been.

The memory of Claire’s words of comfort rose again to fill my mind: Be patient, Eva. It will all get easier.

I hoped – I really hoped – that she was right.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The term ‘hallucination’, read the article I’d called up on the Internet, is applied to false perceptions made by any of the senses, though the ones that are most commonly involved are sight and hearing.

Shifting again in the chair at Mark’s desk in the room that he used as his office, just off the back corridor, I settled in to keep reading. The article scrolled for what seemed like forever and slipped into language that probably only made sense to psychiatrists, but the subsection on ‘Auditory Hallucinations’ perfectly described the kind of voices I’d been hearing from my room. And while most people seeing things appeared to conjure non-existent people and not empty paths, it was still obvious to me that what I’d seen in the Wild Wood fit the criteria for ‘Visual Hallucinations’.

The causes, the article told me, were varied. If I ruled out schizophrenia, that left a list of others that included stress, depression and fatigue. And there were several medications that apparently induced hallucinations as a side-effect. Particularly sedatives.

I rummaged in my handbag on the floor beside the chair to find the sleeping pills I’d been prescribed, and entering the name on the computer searched for side-effects. Yes, there it was – right there in black and white: hallucinations.

I could feel myself relax. I wasn’t going mad at all, I thought, relieved. It was the pills, and nothing more. And if I didn’t take them any more, then that would be the end of it, because the detailed article explained hallucinations always stopped when one removed their cause.

Outside the office in the corridor I heard the back door open and the stamp of boots and scrabbling feet of dogs. I just had time to drop the pills back in my handbag and close down my search screens, returning to the colourful display of website templates I’d been looking at before, as Mark came in and asked me, ‘Any joy?’

‘I don’t know. Which one do you like?’

He arched an eyebrow warily. ‘I thought you said the website was for Susan.’

‘Well, she’ll be maintaining it,’ I said, ‘but it’s Trelowarth’s image that we’re putting out here, and you’ll want to have some say in that. Besides,’ I pointed out, ‘your blog will be from the same template.’

‘My blog?’

‘You’re the expert on Old Garden roses. Oh, come on.’ I smiled at his expression. ‘You’ll have fun. You’ll get to interact with all your customers.’