The Rose Garden

Still looking at me strangely, he opened his mouth to reply and then shut it again, as though wanting to make very sure he was right before speaking. He turned the handle of the room beside my own and pushed the door wide enough to put his head round, then said to me, certain, ‘There’s nobody in here.’

I looked for myself. ‘But I heard them. Two men. They were talking.’

‘Then they must have been outside.’

‘They didn’t sound like they were outside.’

‘Sound plays tricks, sometimes,’ he told me, ‘in old houses.’

Unconvinced, I made a final study of the empty room, then let him close the door.

He said, ‘Come down for breakfast.’

Downstairs, Susan had a full cooked breakfast on the go, with sausage spitting in the pan and floured tomatoes sizzling beside them, eggs and toast and juice and coffee that smelt sharp and rich and heavenly and brought my eyes more fully open.

Susan, turning, waved a spatula towards the table. ‘Have a seat, it’s hardly ready.’

The kitchen had had a remodel since I’d last been here, and the table was a larger one than I remembered, but it occupied the same spot by the window that looked out across what used to be the stable yard, now greenly ringed with overhanging trees and with the former stable building now converted to a garage at its farther edge. I sat where I had always sat, my shoulder to the window wall, and looked across the yard towards the terraced gardens, sheltered by their high brick walls.

The gardens were all separately enclosed and named: the Lower Garden, closest to the house; the Middle Garden; then the largest one, the Upper Garden, and my favourite of them all, the Quiet Garden, which I’d loved best for its name.

These were the legacy of Mark and Susan’s great-great-grandfather, who’d returned from the Boer War with only one leg and a mind in sore need of tranquillity. Nostalgia for a simpler time had driven him to cultivate traditional varieties of roses that were falling out of fashion with the rise of the more modern hybrids gaining popularity because they could bloom more than once a season.

Disdainful of these new hybrid perpetuals, he’d cared for his old-fashioned roses with a passion that he’d passed to his descendants, and through the hard work and investment of subsequent Halletts the business had grown into one of the country’s most highly regarded producers of older historic varieties. In fact, thanks to the family’s obsessive caretaking, these gardens now sheltered some roses that might have been lost altogether to time were it not for Trelowarth.

The sizzling from the cooker brought my gaze back from the window and I watched while Susan turned the sausage.

‘Honestly,’ I said, ‘you didn’t have to go to all this trouble. Cereal and milk would be enough.’

Mark, who’d been pouring the coffee, came over to hand me my mug and sat down in the place just across from me. ‘It’s not for you,’ he assured me. ‘She’s trying to soften me up.’

‘I am not,’ was Susan’s protest.

Mark said, ‘So I guess it’s coincidence, then, that you’ve set your big file of plans for the tea room out here on the table?’

‘I wanted to look at them.’

‘Wanted to show them to Eva, more like.’

‘I did not.’ Susan scraped the sausages out of the pan and crossing to the table set Mark’s plate down, hard, in front of him.

Oblivious, he pointed at the folder with his fork. ‘You’ve got the legends of Trelowarth and that sort of rubbish in there, don’t you?’

Susan passed my plate across for me and, with her own in hand, sat down herself. ‘Of course.’

‘Good. So then you can reassure Eva we don’t have a ghost.’

It was my turn to protest. ‘I never said―’

‘Why would she think there’s a ghost?’ Susan asked.

‘She’s been hearing men’s voices upstairs.’

Susan told him, with feeling, ‘I wish.’

Mark grinned. ‘What, that we had men upstairs?’

‘No, stupid. That we had a ghost. Now that would bring the tourists in.’

Mark told her that depended on the ghost.

Ignoring him, she asked me what the voices had been saying, and I shrugged.

‘I couldn’t hear.’

Mark said, ‘Perhaps they came to give a warning.’ Imitating a stern, ghostly voice, he went on, ‘Do not build a tea room at Trelowarth.’

‘Do you see?’ asked Susan, looking to me for support. ‘You see the sort of thing I have to deal with.’

‘And you love me anyway.’ Her brother’s smile was sure.

‘Yes, well, lucky for you that I do. That’s the only thing keeps me from planting you in the back garden alongside your roses.’

Mark took the threat lightly, and turned his attention to me. ‘So then, what are your plans for the day?’

I said, ‘I don’t know. I suppose I should take care of … what I came for.’

That sobered the mood. Mark looked down at his plate and went on eating silently, then he said quietly, ‘Do you know where?’

‘I was thinking,’ I started, then paused for a moment, collecting myself. ‘I was thinking of up by the Beacon.’ He didn’t react, but I still felt the need to explain, ‘She would want to be somewhere where she had been happy.’

Mark gave a short nod and said, ‘That’s a good spot, then.’ And after a moment, ‘You want me to come with you?’