Authors: Trisha Ashley
I tottered on rubber legs towards the house, turning to give my watchers a rather Queen Mother salute before I went in, and just at that moment a familiar big silver Mercedes glided to a stop. The tinted window noiselessly slid down and for one interminable minute I gazed into a pair of concerned green-rayed hazel eyes. Then the window slid back up and the car moved almost silently on.
It was disconcertingly like a slow-motion scene from a Mafia film, but without the machine guns; I even had Hendrix in my head singing ‘Hey Joe’ as the soundtrack.
‘Nosy bastard!’ Mal muttered, putting his arm round my waist and trying to hurry me over a doorstep that seemed to have suddenly grown to the size of the north face of the Eiger. ‘Looks like that TV gardener man – heard he was staying at the Druid’s Rest last night.’
I didn’t say anything – in my present condition I was just grateful that I hadn’t hallucinated the little scene. In the house everything seemed unsettlingly unfamiliar, and even more clinical than the hospital. Mal’s way of showing his love, regret, and possibly guilt, had been to render the house sterile.
Ma returned from showing two more lots of people around the cottage, bearing
coq au vin
and a bottle of good red wine to build me up.
She found me weeping with frustration because I hadn’t got enough strength left to tear up the Wevills’ get-well card, but did it for me without comment, repelled Mona when she had the nerve to turn up at the door with a plate of Welshcakes like curling stones, and banished me off to bed.
‘Mona and Owen are good friends of mine,’ Mal was protesting as I went. ‘It was generous of Mona to offer to help, despite the unreasonable way Fran has taken against them.’
‘They may be
your
friends, but they’re not Fran’s,’ Ma said. ‘I could tell at a glance that that Mona’s a two-faced cow with her eye on you, despite all her smiling ways, and anyone with shiftier eyes than her husband I’ve yet to see! Anyway, if Fran doesn’t want them in her house, that should be enough for you.’
‘
My
house too, don’t forget,’ began Mal, but that’s all I heard before I shut the bedroom door. Normally I try to pour oil on troubled waters, but just then I didn’t care if the waves engulfed the whole of St Ceridwen’s Well.
I felt much better by next day, which was just as well, because it was pretty exhausting, despite entertaining
en négligé
from the sitting-room sofa.
Rosie phoned me at some length, and I had to dissuade her from driving all the way home to ‘look after’ me. It was all pretty fraught, I can tell you, because the selfish part of me wanted her there with me, while the rest knew it was better that she finished her term and came home at Easter.
‘Really, darling, I’m fine, just a bit anaemic, and Granny’s giving me lots of nourishing food so I’ll soon be over that.’
‘But I could help and cheer you up,’ she insisted, ‘and soon you’re going to be all on your own when Mal goes away! How
could
he leave you like that?’
‘He accepted the contract, Rosie, and it’s very well paid so really he’s doing it for all of us,’ I said, though somehow it didn’t sound quite as convincing when I, rather than Mal, said that sort of thing, probably because he was the one who’d been consistently outspending our income.
Mind you, if by some miracle Plas Gwyn does win
Restoration Gardener
, Mal being away for so long could prove a blessing in disguise, since at least I wouldn’t give myself away in front of him or be presenting him with yet another man to be jealous of.
‘As soon as I’m well I’m going out there for a holiday, Rosie, so it’s all right, really – and I’ve got Carrie and Nia and Rhodri here even when Ma’s not at the cottage, so I’m not going to be alone.’
Eventually I persuaded her to wait until the Easter holidays. And I must say, I’ve always loved being alone in my studio working, so even though I would have loved to see her I was actually starting to feel overly surrounded by people cooped up like this, and ready for a bit of solitude.
After lunch Carrie popped in with some of her Welshcakes, which are on a totally different culinary plain to Mona Wevill’s, and a warm and fragrant bara brith. She told Mal right to his face that he should be ashamed of himself even
thinking
of going off and leaving me alone for six months after I’d gone through such a trauma! He was coldly polite when she was there, but afterwards I ended up having to assure him that I didn’t mind a bit and understood why he had to do it, and the sincerity factor was probably distinctly lacking.
Aunt Beth had already phoned last night to offer me a Highland terrier puppy when Morag next whelps, but she had forgotten Mal’s dog phobia. She wanted me to put Mal on the phone so she could give him a piece of her mind, as did Uncle Joe when he called from Miami, but I didn’t, because it isn’t going to do anything except make him angry that all my family and friends seem to be united in condemning his trip into the blue.
Nia, when she paid a visit later in the afternoon, said it was because they didn’t understand the nature of the clever, tricky, brooding dark Celt, not being Welsh themselves, but I reminded her that Ma is half Welsh, which is why she didn’t burn our holiday house down back in the seventies when she was being a Daughter of Glendower and keeping the home fires burning for the English holiday-home invaders.
‘I was
never
a Daughter of Glendower,’ she said firmly.
‘And don’t you mean Mal is a
selfish
dark Celt? It’s only making him cross because he knows he really shouldn’t leave me for six months, particularly now. But at least if Plas Gwyn is chosen for the restoration, Gabe Weston should have been, filmed and gone before he gets back, shouldn’t he? If he doesn’t seduce Ma into selling him Fairy Glen, that is.’
‘You mean he’s seen it again?’ Nia demanded. ‘I know he stayed at the Druid’s Rest overnight because he wanted to spend the whole day at Plas Gwyn, but he didn’t mention the cottage. Mind you, he didn’t even hint that we were on the shortlist either!’
‘Yes, I thought I’d hallucinated him driving past and staring at me when I was coming home from hospital yesterday, but actually he was the Miss Patten Ma was showing round the Glen.’
‘
Miss Patten?
’
‘His PA, apparently, he got her to book the viewing. He told Ma Fairy Glen was totally unlike what he was looking for, but had a strange attraction for him. He seems to have a strange attraction for Ma too: she said he was a lovely man. She’s going to make all her friends phone up and vote for Plas Gwyn next week.’
‘He
does
seem very genuine,’ Nia said a trifle self-consciously. ‘I met him again when I went back up to the house with Rhodri. He’s really enthusiastic about the maze.’
‘I know.’ I reached for my rather well-worn copy of
Restoration Gardener
. ‘It says here: “I suppose all gardeners have a passion for some particular aspect of their profession, and with me it is a fascination with the history and development of the maze, from its earliest beginnings as a ritual pathway cut from turf or stone, to the later high-hedged puzzle labyrinths.”’
‘Amazing – you hardly had to look at the words!’ Nia said pointedly, and I flushed slightly and hastily put the book down again. ‘But at least it means if they do the restoration he will take care to keep the turf maze as it should be.’
‘Perhaps he’s enthusiastic about all ancient monuments, and that’s the attraction of Fairy Glen,’ I suggested.
‘You don’t think he
really
might buy it, do you?’
‘Ma said he isn’t looking for a holiday cottage, but somewhere to live. He’d keep his London place on as well, though. And they seem to have got on like a house on fire,’ I added gloomily. ‘Ma, of course, mentioned what happened to me, and he said he was very sorry and hoped I felt much better soon, or something. And she told him about my rose garden.’
‘So did I,’ Nia said guiltily. ‘It just sort of slipped out.’
‘Well, it’s not one of my guiltier secrets.’
‘Where’s your mam now?’
‘Showing yet more people around Fairy Glen. I’m starting to think we should charge for viewing, because I suspect at least half of them come just out of curiosity.’
‘I hope so. You’ll just have to put anyone unsuitable off when you are well enough to show the cottage again.’
‘That’s what I thought I’d done with Gabe Weston!’
‘Well, we need an artist or craftsman to buy it, someone like us.’
‘I suppose he might not do much to the glen, and let us walk there anyway,’ I suggested hopefully. The glade and the standing stones had always been my place for being quiet, my refuge, and I longed for the moment when I could go up there again and feel some kind of healing begin.
And
it was where I first set eyes on Mal, striding up out of the misty trees like a Celtic prince, as I was sitting contemplating life on the fallen slab. He’d been a great walker then – it used to be one of the things we all did together, with Rosie circling round us in her little green frog wellies like a jealous sheepdog.
It’s strange how life changes: it all seems just the blink of an eye ago.
‘Why should Gabriel Weston send you flowers?’ Mal demanded, practically tossing a hand-tied and beautiful bouquet of roses into my lap next morning. ‘You hardly know the man.’
‘Oh, aren’t they
lovely
!’ I exclaimed, softly stroking the velvety petals and breathing in the heavenly scent. ‘No, of course we’ve barely met, but I expect Ma told him all about my miscarriage while she was showing him round the house – you know what she’s like.’
‘Only too well, but I would rather she didn’t retail our personal affairs to every chance-met stranger.’
Before I could point out that Gabe was hardly a chance-met stranger I spotted an Interflora van drawing up by the gate. ‘I think there may be another bouquet on its way, Mal.’
I sincerely hoped that this one was from someone innocuous, like Aunt Beth; but unfortunately the arrangement of blooms set in a square glass vase full of what looked like frogspawn came with an off-beat get-well message from Tom.
Mal read it over my shoulder: ‘“Hey, Fran, get back up on that board, there’s a big one coming!”’
‘What does he mean by that? And you can’t tell me your mother told
him
about the miscarriage as well,’ he snapped.
‘No, I think it must have been Rosie.’
‘Rosie? Why on earth should it be Rosie?’
‘Well,
you
were the one who emailed to tell her all about Tom turning up in the first place, so it’s hardly surprising if they are now in touch,’ I pointed out, but it still didn’t stop my Celtic prince getting into a right royal huff.
My hand still does not really seem connected to my head, so it is just as well I have several batches of cartoons doing the rounds already, and had already dispatched samples of the Alphawoman strip on its merry way.
Although I have been back home almost a week now I still feel light-headed and tired all the time due to the anaemia, and sort of anti-climactic and depressed, which I expect is a combination of losing the baby and Mal’s imminent departure.
An endless loop of that old ‘MacArthur Park’ song about leaving a cake out in the rain and losing the recipe plays inside my head and sometimes breaks out in doleful snatches, but Mal doesn’t complain, even about that.
Apart from the huff over the bouquets, he has on the whole been quite patient and sweet since I got home, even with everyone being disapproving towards him, and Ma constantly around making large quantities of nourishing food and reducing our kitchen to a slightly flour-dusted state of homely chaos.
Usually he’s really annoyed with me when I’m ill, because he’s so useless at looking after himself, but all my get-up-and-go has got up and gone, and he’s
still
being nice to me. While I expect a lot of this is due to guilt over both his attitude to the baby and his imminent departure, not
all
, surely?
He’s even asked the Wevills not to use our drive while he is away, so I hope they will just leave me alone, apart, perhaps, from reporting my movements.
He paints a beautiful picture of my having the holiday of a lifetime out there in the Caribbean with him, and our turning a new page on our life together … or something. He can actually have a very poetic turn of phrase sometimes, though when you try to analyse it later without the dark blue, long-lashed eyes, the handsome face and enticing tinge of a Welsh accent to go with it, it doesn’t sound quite as impressive.
He’s trying to involve me in his plans by showing me all the information, which
does
make it look like a different kind of paradise from the one I already thought we’d got. Hopefully, without snakes or vultures.
Dear Fran,
I know you didn’t want me to contact you again, but ever since I saw you I keep thinking about you, especially now—I’m really sorry about the baby.
Of course I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you, or Rosie, so don’t worry about that, just concentrate on getting well.
Love, Tom
Dear Tom,
Thank you for the lovely flowers and message. It was very kind and thoughtful of you.
I’m feeling much better already, and will soon be back to normal, which is just as well since I have lots of work I should be getting on with!
Fran
I just answered the door to find Dottie on the step, with Rollover breathing down the back of her neck.
‘Visit of condolence – heard you’d slipped your foal,’ she said, and thrust a jar of calf ’s foot jelly at me.
Then she mounted Rollover, clicked through her teeth and rode off.
The jelly looked vile – her housekeeper (or maybe that should just be ‘keeper’?) makes it for these lady-of-the-manor occasions.
Dottie’s heart is in the right place, I’m just not sure where her brain is.
‘The whole village seems to be going
Restoration Gardener
mad. I don’t know what’s got into the place,’ Mal grumbled. ‘All I wanted was a quiet pint at the Druid’s Rest and it’s all done up with posters saying “Vote for Plas Gwyn!” In fact, every window in St Ceridwen’s Well seems to have one, and there’s bunting across the high street.’
I glanced guiltily at the small poster in our front window, which he hadn’t yet spotted – Carrie had breezed by earlier and stuck it there. ‘Well, if they do win it tomorrow, it will be a great thing for the village. Lots more visitors equals more jobs at the castle, more customers for the café and gift shop – more everything all round. And even if they don’t, this next programme should still put St Ceridwen’s on the map.’
‘Yes, and house prices will probably rocket!’ he said, looking more cheerful, though I don’t know why since we are here for ever, so the house going up in value has no relevance at all. ‘But I knew you would be as garden restoration mad as the rest of them so I thought we could go down to the pub tomorrow night for an hour and watch it there, if you feel up to it,’ he said generously. ‘They’re having a special night. The place will be packed out but we can go early enough to find a seat and a bar snack before the rush starts.’
‘That’s a lovely idea, Mal,’ I said, though really I would have much preferred to have watched it up at the hall with Carrie, Nia and Rhodri, and I didn’t much feel like going out at all yet, come to that. ‘And perhaps Ma could come too?’
‘Come where?’ Ma said, her gaily-turbaned head appearing round the door suddenly like a benign genie.
‘The pub, for the
Restoration Gardener
programme and celebrations – or commiserations,’ I explained. ‘It’s the vote tomorrow night.’
‘Wild horses wouldn’t keep me away,’ she said, ‘but if you are going, Fran, I’ll drive you there and back.’
‘It’s not that far,’ Mal said. ‘Time she started to get out and about again.’
‘Yes, I’m fine really, Ma – I just feel a bit light-headed and far away.’
‘I’ll drive,’ she said firmly.
‘Do you think the dogs would like calf’s foot jelly? There’s a jar in the fridge.’
‘I’m sure they would love it – what a treat!’ she said, so at least Dottie’s offering would not be entirely wasted.
We arrived at the pub just early enough to bag a big corner table with a good view of the giant TV screen, which was just as well, because in the end Nia, Rhodri and Carrie decided to come down too, closely followed by the rest of the village.
Ma beckoned them over as soon as she spotted them, and though Mal was his usual slightly stiff and tight-lipped self at first, he soon thawed out when Rhodri, who was practically incoherent with nerves, began pressing drinks on him. After a couple of stiff whiskies I’m sure he had forgotten his daft suspicions about me and Rhodri – or even that he didn’t like gardening – for he cheered just as loudly as everyone else when the programme started.
‘Welcome to a special edition of
Restoration Gardener
,’ Gabe Weston said, ‘where you vote for the garden
you
want us to feature in our next series.’
Then he showed pictures of the three contenders with the numbers to call and declared the voting lines opened. After that, you could hardly hear the commentary for the sound of clicking mobile phones.
The first two properties (‘Boo! Rubbish! Throw them out!’ shouted the partisan crowd) seemed to have an awful lot going for them, as far as I could see: there already were garden features, overgrown or partly hidden though they might be.
Then they got to Plas Gwyn (‘Winner – winner – winner!’ everyone chanted) and there was nothing much except grass and lewdly clipped topiary – until clever camera angles and a commentary by Gabe brought out the hidden shapes of what had once been there, so that you could see it appearing out of thin air before your eyes.
And when he got to the maze he made it sound so fascinating that you felt it would be an absolute crime not to restore such ‘a national treasure’ … though actually it was unclear whether he was referring to the maze or to Dottie, who had appeared suddenly through a gap in the hedge looking like a perambulating hay tarpaulin and could be faintly heard ordering the camera crew to ‘Clear orf!’.
‘Oh God, she’s blown it!’ Rhodri said, clutching his fair head in his hands despairingly.
‘No, I think she might have just clinched it – look,’ Nia said.
In the background Dottie could still be heard shouting, ‘Hey you – gardening feller!’ before she was faded out and the camera panned to Gabe’s face, smiling.
‘For the chance to restore Plas Gwyn – and meet more of the Gwyn-Whatmire family – please phone … ’ he said, giving the details, and it might have been just me, but he seemed to be much more enthusiastic and persuasive about Plas Gwyn than the other two.
‘So, that’s all three properties,’ Gabe said. ‘All worthy of restoration; all, in their own way, capable of being stunningly recreated to their former glories. Now, the lines are about to close, and while the votes are being counted I will let the owner of the Old Mill, our latest project, tell you what winning the restoration has meant to him and his family.’
At the Druid’s Rest you could hardly hear yourself speak for the sound of voices demanding drinks, but the second Gabe came back on screen again, an envelope in his hand, the whole room fell silent.
‘The votes have now been counted, and I’m about to open this envelope and find out which property you think should be the winner … ’ He pulled out a card and looked up: ‘And I can tell you now that the winner is … ’
There was a theatrical pause and I heard an anguished groan from Rhodri.
‘The winner is Plas Gwyn in North Wales!’
The place erupted into noise so that the end of the programme was drowned out, but by then Rhodri was embracing everyone within reach, beaming, and Ma was bouncing up and down like a clockwork monkey, clapping her hands and screeching: ‘Yes!
Yes!
’
Nia was looking stunned. I nudged her. ‘You’ve done it – you’ve won!’
‘Yes, congratulations,’ Mal shouted across the table.
‘I can hardly take it in,’ she said, then made a sudden lunge for Rhodri, whose lips were forming the words ‘The drinks are on me!’, luckily unheard in the din.
‘Shut up, you idiot,’ she said, pulling him down. ‘You can’t afford grand gestures and, anyway, everyone will buy you drinks now until they run out of your ears!’
Which they did, but by then I was safely tucked up at home in bed, exhausted, but filled with a strange mixture of excitement and happiness for Rhodri’s sake that we had been chosen and nervousness that for the next few months I could meet Gabe Weston around any corner – though if Ma does sell Fairy Glen to him in the end I might just have to get used to coming face to face with my murky past all the time.
Restoration fever died down slightly and Ma finally returned home to Cheshire, though whether that was to be tactful so that Mal and I could have a last couple of days alone together, or because she was missing all her chums, I don’t know.
She left me a large supply of bottled Guinness, someone having told her that it was full of iron, and also a sack of dried apricots, ditto.
Nia has promised her she will keep an eye on me, though how she will do that while working in her new pottery, having just moved her kiln and everything up there, and simultaneously orchestrating Rhodri’s grandiose schemes, is anyone’s guess.
Besides, I don’t need keeping an eye on since I’m getting better by the day and will soon be back to normal, especially once I lose this feeling that everyone is very far away behind a sheet of thick glass.
The hens were glad to see me again instead of the muttering old madwoman in the paisley-patterned wellies. Ma’d been going on about Shania making good broth instead of eating her head off and laying nothing, until finally I burst into tears and said I couldn’t possibly eat one of the girls, it would be cannibalism, so Shania had probably felt a sense of threat.
It looked like Mal was sincere about clearing his debts and starting afresh, because he sold his car!
Unfortunately, this meant that he was reduced to driving my old Beetle around for the last few days, and he didn’t like it. (I didn’t like it either—I’m possessive about the poor old thing.)
‘What on earth is that smell coming out of the heater?’ he demanded the first time he used it.
‘I spilled a cup of McDonald’s cappuccino down the air vent last time I was over at the supermarket, shopping,’ I explained. ‘The whole car smelled lovely for about a week, and then it seemed to go off.’
‘It smells like vomit. I’ve got you an air freshener.’ He didn’t offer to buy me a newer car, but I am fond of my old one anyway.
Mal was busy with last-minute preparations, like laying up his boat for the duration. I expect he still has a huge loan on
Cayman Blue
, but there is no sign of him selling that yet, and Owen Wevill is going to keep an eye on it for him while he is away. Mal has packed all the papers regarding the mortgage to go with him; it is in his name, since he bought the house before we met, and I suggested the remortgage would be a good time to put the house in joint names. I know it doesn’t matter really, since what is mine is his and vice versa, it’s just this feeling that I’d like
my
name on the deeds to the home I love too.
Mal has also invested a lot of energy in rendering the house spick and span after Invasion of Ma,
I
clearly not yet being up to anything other than a little desultory dusting even were I remotely interested. This early spring clean might have to last for six months, the way I feel now.
He is still being affectionate and understanding … only now I sense that a slightly critical note has begun to creep in, as though he thinks I am malingering and should be back to normal, especially when he said he knew how I felt (which I’m very sure he doesn’t), but I was to concentrate on getting fit and well while he was away and back to the old Fran that he loved.
The thin, much younger one, I think he meant. I just wish he’d drop this constant harping on my becoming ‘the Fran he fell in love with’, as though his love were conditional. Even if I lose some weight by the time I go out there – which I fully intend to do, only I feel too tired just yet to even
think
about it – I am glad to say that I will not revert to the thin, dreamy and trusting thirty-year-old single mother, still living at home, that he married.
I’ve got more chance of turning into a fairy.