The Rose Garden

Felicity was looking at him with the keen eyes of an old friend who will not be fooled. ‘I’m surprised you found the book at all,’ she said innocently, ‘if it was at the back of your bookshelves.’

‘Yeah, well, Eva asked me yesterday about the Butlers, and I had some time last night, so I just thought I’d look. You know.’

She smiled at him. ‘Oh yes. I know.’

‘Shut up.’ Their banter had the easy back and forth that came with practice. ‘Shouldn’t you be getting back to work?’

‘I’ve got five minutes still. And I was hoping to take one of you big strong men back to the shop with me. I’ve just had an artist ship over her paintings – they’re huge, and I’ll need help to hang them.’

Oliver was unenthusiastic. ‘Mark’s got bigger muscles. And while you’re off doing that,’ he said, ‘I’ll show the book to Eva.’

Which was clearly what Felicity had wanted to begin with.

I watched them go. ‘She’s fun.’

‘She is that.’ His gaze moved to me as he said, ‘That was nicely manoeuvred.’

‘What was?’

‘Your inviting Fee out to have lunch with us. And with Mark. You’ve noticed she’s head over heels for him.’

The fact that he’d noticed surprised me at first, till I realised he worked with Felicity and they were obviously close. ‘Yes, well,’ I told him, ‘I didn’t do all the manoeuvring, did I?’

He grinned. ‘I’ve done my share of helping hang pictures. And Mark’s muscles really are bigger. Besides, how do you know I wasn’t manoeuvring for my own benefit?’

I ate my last chip and wadded the paper with careful hands. ‘Oliver …’

‘What?’

‘I do like you.’

‘But?’

‘I just don’t want you to think that I’m … that is, I’m really not looking for …’

‘Hey.’ I could hear the faint smile in his voice. ‘It’s a book, not an etching.’ He rose to his feet from the harbour wall, held out his hand for the newspaper. ‘Come on, let me chuck that in the bin for you, then you can come and look at what I’ve found.’

I wasn’t fooled. He still had an agenda, but I knew there wasn’t a thing I could do to discourage him. Men who had Oliver’s confidence weren’t to be swayed by small things like the fact I had fallen for somebody else.

I formed that thought idly enough, but it struck me with a sudden force that stopped me in my tracks. I couldn’t honestly have meant that, could I? Yet I sat here in the sunshine on the harbour wall and turned the thought a thousand ways, and every way I turned it, it was true.

Oliver, who had no way of knowing that I’d just been hit by something like a thunderbolt, asked whether I was ready and I numbly told him yes, I was, and went to see the book.

He’d left it set out for me on the small working desk beside the bookshelves in the storage room of the museum, in the back beside the little kitchenette that had a kettle and some cupboards and a sink and not much more.

The storage room itself was crowded thick with shelves and boxes and it smelt of dust that hadn’t been disturbed in quite some time. Still, there was proper light to read by, and an antique wooden captain’s chair that proved to be quite comfortable.

Collecting my still–rattled thoughts, I focused my attention on the book itself.

It was an older book, with cloth-and-cardboard covers frayed and dented at the edges and the binding at the spine so badly cracked and worn that whole sections of pages, stitched together, slid and shifted when I leafed my way along to find the place that Oliver had marked.

He came to stand behind me, leaning over, pointing to the lines that were of interest. ‘There, you see? Below that bit about the Cripplehorn.’

But I’d already started reading in the paragraph before that:

At the western limit of the beach there is a rock the locals call the Cripplehorn, which at its highest point is measured more than ninety feet, and which extends beyond the cliffs to form a breakwater. Upon its eastern face two minor streams converge to form a fickle waterfall, at times a mere cascade, at times a cataract that rushes to the sand and draws a varied wealth of plant life from the rock …

After describing all this plant life in excruciating detail, and the several types of birds that liked to nest upon the Cripplehorn, the author made a detour from his scientific facts to state:

The base of the cascade conceals a narrow cavern safely set above the highest tide, which in former times reportedly was favoured by the Butler brothers of the nearby manor of Trelowarth for the storage of their smuggled cargoes. It is spoken still with no small pride that never once did any person of the village tell the secret of this hiding place, no matter what reward was offered by the local constable, so well-regarded were the Butlers for their generosity in sharing of the wealth they gained by working in defiance of the law. Their daring exploits were later recounted in a journal that was published by the younger of the brothers as A Life Before the Wind. Proceeding westward, one encounters an uncommon wealth of avian diversity …

That was all that had been written of the Butler brothers. After that the author veered off once again into his birds and plants and rock formations. I read through the paragraphs again to be sure I hadn’t missed something of value, then I turned round in my chair to look at Oliver. ‘This journal of Jack Butler’s …’