The Rose Garden

Why him? I asked a second time. Why couldn’t it be Oliver who made me feel this way? Why did it have to be a man I couldn’t have? It wasn’t fair.

‘It isn’t fair,’ I told the dogs, but they just wagged and grinned agreement as we reached the turning in the path where I could glimpse the ruined Beacon, rising as it always had above the blue Atlantic where the wind had carried off Katrina’s ashes.

She hadn’t stayed, I thought, so why should I? I wasn’t bound here, and I’d done the thing I’d come to do, so why not simply leave? I knew it had to be this place that was affecting me, this place where strange grey ladies disappeared and ley lines ran below the ground, and if I went away then surely things would soon return to normal. I would leave and not be missed and Daniel Butler would forget me, and Trelowarth would go on the way it always had, without me.

Or at least that’s what I thought, until I climbed the final few feet of the path and came out with the dogs beside the turning in the road between Polgelly and St Non’s, and saw that Mark had cleared a broad and level place up here to make a car park that was wide enough for several cars, I noticed. Or a tour bus.

And standing there I realised that I couldn’t leave. Not yet. I turned around again and looked back down the way that I had come, to where the glass roof of the greenhouse caught the early sunlight like a mirror, and I knew I couldn’t leave till Susan had her tea room open and I’d signed the papers for the Trust to keep Trelowarth where it should be, with the Hallett family, for a good long time to come. There was nothing for it, really, but to set aside all thoughts of leaving, and resolve to stay.

And if there was another reason, one I was less willing to acknowledge, for my choosing not to go just yet, I pushed it far back in my mind and locked it there.

I set to work the next few days on doing what I’d promised Susan I would do. I sent the early press releases out, and made some phone calls to the local tour providers to convince them of Trelowarth’s charms.

By Wednesday, when Felicity came up to help again, I could announce that House & Garden was considering a feature, and that one firm operating minibuses to St Non’s was eager to include us in its schedule.

Susan, who’d been trying to decide which of the trees close by the greenhouse would be best used as the ‘cloutie tree’, stopped looking for a moment. ‘Really?’

‘Really. They do tourist runs from Plymouth, so they pick their people up at their hotels and stop at St Non’s on their way down to Falmouth for lunch, but they wanted a different stop on the way back where their tourists could stretch a bit, walk around, and we’re conveniently right on their route. So I said we could give them a garden tour and a traditional Cornish cream tea, and they went for it.’

Susan was delighted. ‘Well done you.’

‘I said they could start the beginning of August, is that still all right?’

She’d told me she’d need that much time to get all her work properly done on the tea room. She gave a firm nod. ‘Yes. What do you think of this one?’

I looked upwards at the tree in question while Felicity stepped back and frowned and said, ‘It ought to be a thorn.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Because most cloutie trees are thorn trees,’ said Felicity.

Susan said, ‘But this one’s pretty.’

‘No, it needs the proper energy.’ Felicity held firm, and in the end we settled on the only hawthorn tree close by the greenhouse door.

‘Well, I suppose,’ said Susan, ‘I could have Mark take down these other two beside it, so it has a little bit more presence.’

Felicity thought that would do very nicely. ‘And you can put a little pond or something here beside it, for the water.’

‘Water?’

‘Susan,’ said Felicity, ‘you cannot have a cloutie tree unless it’s next to water, that’s tradition.’

‘Ah.’ Resigned, she took another look around, with hands on hips. ‘Well, the pipes to the greenhouse run just over there, we could maybe tap into those somehow. I’ll have to speak to Paul.’

I asked, ‘Who’s Paul?’

Felicity smiled knowingly. ‘Her plumber. Do you know,’ she said to Susan, ‘I have never seen a project need more plumbing work than this one.’

Susan shrugged the teasing off. ‘Is that a fact?’

‘If you ask me, it’s all the fault of that story Claire told us about how her grandparents met,’ said Felicity. ‘Good looking plumbers who strip off whenever it rains, and all that. It creates expectations.’

‘Claire’s grandfather didn’t strip off in the rain,’ Susan told her friend, amused. ‘He took his shirt off, Fee, and he was only being chivalrous.’

‘Yes, well, we’ve had a lot of rain,’ Felicity remarked, ‘and your Paul hasn’t been chivalrous once, has he? That’s all I’m saying. I’ll tell you who’s chivalrous,’ she turned her gaze to me. ‘Oliver. He’s been all over these past few days, looking for leads on your smugglers.’

Susan smiled. ‘Yes, well, that’s men for you. You can hit them with a rock and it still doesn’t put them off.’

I sent her a dry look. ‘You can’t possibly remember the rock throwing thing. You weren’t old enough.’

‘I didn’t say I remembered.’ She stooped to pull a straggling weed. ‘Did you really knock him flat?’