The Sea Garden (5 page)

She splashed to the nearest rock and held on, panting, blinking the salt from her eyes. She was fine. How ridiculous. Nothing was wrong. Yet the feeling persisted, hardening into an image of her own body on the seabed, the only movement from her hair waving slowly like weeds.

To prove her vitality, she swam crawl and backstroke until the sky was catching fire.

 

S
hops and restaurants lined the harbour waterfront like a string of amber beads in the gathering night. To the whicker of bicycles moving past, returning sailors leapt from their yachts and shouted greetings and gathered to relay news of the day's winds and triumphs.

Ellie parked the bicycle outside the rental shop.

“You want again for tomorrow?” asked the proprietor.

“Yes, please.”

“You have a nice time?”

“Very nice, thank you.”

She realised she was relieved to be among other people—people who were not scrutinising her—and to have a friendly, inconsequential exchange. Back in her room at the Oustaou, she checked the messages on her mobile as her laptop powered up. There were a couple of messages; she called the office first.

Her business partner, Sarah—the May of Brooks May—picked up on the second ring. “At last! I've been trying to get hold of you and kept going straight through to voice mail.” It was reassuring to hear Sarah's voice, to visualize the red curls bobbing as she tried to do six tasks with her spare hand, still at the office attached to the nursery just outside Chichester.

“I was with the client most of the day.”

“So how's it going?”

“Well . . . not straightforward, but it's a stunning place. All sea and sky and light—except for the site of the restoration, unfortunately. But there's plenty of scope. It could be sensational.”

“But?”

“But . . .” How could she explain? “There's no ‘but.' The amount of work the client's talking about is a bit overwhelming—more than just the memorial garden. There's a lot to be done to the gardens leading into it.”

Sarah's silence on the line seemed to question whether it had been a good idea to take this on. But they had rehearsed all the arguments too many times: this was business, a game-changing opportunity to expand internationally.

“You don't always have to be so . . . tough, so hard on yourself, Ellie. You can say that it's too much.”

Ellie hesitated, then decided not to tell her business partner about the boy on the boat; reliving it would not help.

“Look, I'll call you in a day or so and let you know how it's working out here. There's a lot of mind-changing and . . . I don't know, a bit of a strange vibe. It's not going to be straightforward.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I'm just . . . perhaps I'm tired. I can't seem to think.”

“Sure you're all right?”

“Yeah . . . I need to do some more research. It could be a huge job for us, a real chance to prove ourselves, but obviously I need to be sure we can deliver.”

“Given the obvious difficulties, perhaps the most practical solution would be to offer some designs and let them arrange construction?”

“You may well be right. But to get full credit we'll need to oversee the whole project. I'm sure it can be done, but it will require some thought. Perhaps we could think about subcontracting or sharing the jobs of building and purchasing the plants with an established landscape company on the mainland.”

“Do you want me to come out? The Akehurst job will be finished in the next few days; I could get on a plane.”

“No, it's not worth it. I'll be home myself soon enough. But you might do a bit of research on landscape and garden firms based in Provence that we could approach.”

“But it might be helpful to—”

“No, really, the extra expense . . . Laurent de Fayols is only paying for one of us to get here. If nothing comes of this, we'll barely cover costs, and the office will be closed in the meantime.”

“If you're sure.”

“ 'Course.”

 

S
he didn't go far that evening, eating dinner at one of the tables laid out under the Oustaou's red canopy. No sign of Lieutenant Meunier tonight. She felt the pocket of her jeans. His card was still there.

“You are very serious, thinking all the time,” said Jean-Luc as he placed a platter of Provençal hors d'oeuvres in front of her.

“Yes. . . . Jean-Luc, do you know a man on the island who wears a panama hat, white linen shirt?” Even as she was saying the words, she felt stupid. “No, forget it. There must be hundreds of men here it could be. I'm—”

“Sooner or later, you meet everyone here.”

He smiled as if he knew why she was asking.

She let him think what he liked. He was right, though: the Place d'Armes was clearly the beating heart of the island. In the slightly sticky heat, men played
p
é
tanque
. The evening crowd seemed to be mostly families with younger children, and older couples, self-consciously dressing down. The few teenagers were of university age, roaming in well-behaved packs. The atmosphere was the same as any holiday island with good sailing: full of the quietly well-to-do and the bourgeois families,
bon chic, bon genre
, who had been coming here for decades, all meeting each summer, their children growing up together during long days full of healthy activities.

When she had finished her meal, Ellie strolled out among them, people-watching carefully. She lingered at the many ice cream shops so as not to look conspicuous walking round and round the square. They sold extraordinary flavours: lavender, liquorice, apple tart, candied orange, bitter caramel, and an unfathomable blue confection labelled “Stroumph.” She did not try any, nor did she see anyone resembling the man she'd spoken to on the boat.

4

The Restoration

Wednesday, June 5

S
he arrived at the Domaine de Fayols by nine o'clock the next morning, hoping to show Laurent her preliminary sketches of the memorial garden and get his reaction.

“He has gone to Paris,” said Jeanne.

“Oh.”

The housekeeper gave a smile as thin as her body. “Did he not tell you?”

“No.”

“He left some information for you.”

On the library table was a botanical dictionary dedicated to the region topped by a note, again written with a fountain pen. “Another idea! An apothecary garden as part of the memorial? The doctor experimented with growing the medicinal plants he needed.”

That was all. No polite excuse or explanation for his sudden absence. She looked up into a shaft of sunlight that fizzed with dust motes. In the brightness Ellie noticed for the first time how worn most of the furniture was, the faded colours of the rugs on the tiled floor.

It occurred to her for the first time to question whether there was enough money to pay for the restoration job, let alone the daunting new projects Laurent now seemed to envisage. She stared into an enlargement of one of the age-speckled photographs with a rising annoyance. It would not be the first time she had been inveigled into wasting time on what had turned out to be nothing more than a fantasy of self-importance.

This time Ellie recognised the tapping on the stone floors. The sound of waves—breaths in, breaths out—preceded the entrance of Mme de Fayols.

“Bonjour, madame.”

The woman waved away her greeting, paused unsteadily, and then approached with the irritating inevitability of a wasp to an August picnic.

“After the fire, I had to have someone to live here with me, or that was what the mayor decided when he came down to see me with his deputy and a woman from the commune I had never met. As if they felt I needed to be looked after like a child. It was only a small fire, but it left this room blackened to blazes.”

She rasped a strange laugh at her choice of words. “It looked worse than it was. The couple who came to look after me covered it over with cheap paint, but I couldn't bear to be in there; the smoke marks didn't take long to break through the thin white skin, so the room was shut up.”

Ellie had no idea what to say.

“That was when Laurent decided to come back from Paris. He had to, for me, don't you see. Good of him, all things considered. But he has to go back now and then, to keep everything on track. We can't expect him to stay here all the time.”

“It's perfectly all right,” said Ellie. Though a hint of his intentions might have been polite.

“He's a gambler, you know, like his father. Sometimes he has a run of luck, other times . . . well, let's not dwell on the other times.”

Ellie shook her head.

“You make choices when you're young and you spend the rest of your life paying for them,” continued Mme de Fayols, with the same hard look as the previous evening. She pointed at the note and the open book on the table. “That's what this is all about. Don't say I'm not being as helpful as I can be.”

It was odd thing to say. “Laurent told me the story of the doctor. I can see why you would want to preserve the garden in his memory.”

“There's always a price to be paid.”

“Right. . . . I'm going to take these out with me, see whether there are any traces of the old landscaping.” Ellie shut the book, keen to escape.

“You do that,” said Madame. “Though you still don't understand, do you?”

“I'm sorry?”

“Nothing. We have to watch out for the past. It can come back to bite us.”

“What do you mean?”

But the old woman only smiled.

 

T
he wisteria tunnel and the enclosed green spaces felt comfortably familiar as she wandered down to the memorial garden.

Four stone urns, which had not been there the previous day, stood one at each corner of the
bassin
. Were they the originals? She would have to check. Laurent must have asked the estate gardeners to get them out of storage or move them from another part of the garden. They were planted with lilies, the equivalent of house flowers arranged in vases—they wouldn't take root. Why bother? What a waste, when the grounds were under reconstruction. Were they some kind of message to keep her thoughts on the primary purpose of the garden?

At the head of the pool a stone bench had appeared, too, quite possibly the one from the photograph. It had been broken at some stage and badly repaired. The stone serpent that had once coiled across the front edge was missing its head, and one end of the seat was cracked. It seemed solid enough, though, and useful too. She pulled her laptop and sketchbook out of her bag and sat down. Whether Laurent de Fayols was here or not, he was paying for a week's consultation and would want to see something tangible for his money.

Staring into the green wall, it was easy to lose herself in an imagined version of the garden as it had once been. She drew quickly and scribbled notes on plants and light.

A movement across the pool caught her eye. From her seated position the water gleamed silver. But something had sent ripples across its surface. Curious, she got up and leaned forward, one foot on the stone rim of the
bassin
. From this angle the water was pewter grey. Her reflection was sharp and still.

The outline of a man slid up behind her.

Her heart seemed to jump out of her body. She spun round. “Yes? Who's that?”

There was no one there.

Dizzy, she looked back at the reflection in the pool. She was alone. She went down on her knees, hands on the edge, to lean over the water. It was a serene glossy blackness. As she pulled herself away, the shadow of a bird swooped across.

Then she was shaking uncontrollably. She remained sitting on the ground, dazed by her body's reaction. As her fright subsided and she consolidated logical explanations for what she had seemed to see, she was unable to shift the notion that the figure resembled the man who had slunk up behind her at the lighthouse. Stubbornly immune to logic, he took up position in her thoughts, each detail coming more clearly into focus: the assertive stance, the loose clothes, the stillness that somehow constituted a threat. But there was no one there—how could he have been a reflection behind her?

Her back prickled. Now that her imagination was working overtime, she could not shake the feeling of being watched. She let her eyes move from left to right. Apart from a creaking in the trees, all was quiet. She twisted her head slightly but saw no one. A shift of the light through the leaves raked light across the grass.

Unsettled, but cross with herself now, she tried to concentrate on the photographs. Under a magnifying glass she attempted to identify the plants Laurent had in mind for an apothecary's garden.

A shadow fell.

This time the figure did not dematerialize. It was stout, with a well-tended stomach over which blue workman's trousers were hitched. One of the estate workers, surely.

“Bonjour, monsieur.”

He wrestled with the possibility of ignoring the niceties, then ingrained politeness won out.
“Bonjour, madame.”

“Have you come to show me the water source?” she asked, speaking slowly in English.
“La source?”

“Non.”

He looked suspiciously at the photographs, her notes, and her breasts.
“Pourquoi vous êtes ici?”

He launched into a tirade, much of which she could not understand. His accent was thick, and he snarled his way through his piece without looking her in the eye. But she got the gist. He and the other gardeners could not understand why she had been brought in. They could easily do what was required themselves. And Madame had never wanted the old garden restored; she enjoyed its savage dereliction.

His message delivered, he stomped off before she could begin to formulate a reply. Not an emissary sent by Laurent, then—but quite possibly by his mother.

As early as her conscience would allow in late afternoon, and with enough notes and sketches to justify her time, Ellie gathered her things. She was looking forward to finding another swimming cove, to getting back to the friendly ease of the Place d'Armes. She had almost reached the top of the terrace stairs when Jeanne came out to meet her.

“Madame would like you to dine with her this evening.”

Her mind blanked in search of an excuse.

“I'll show you up to a room you can use to shower and change.”

“I'm sorry, but I have nothing to change into. All I have are the clothes I'm wearing.”

“Follow me, please.”

They ascended a wide stone staircase. Along a dark corridor, Jeanne opened a door and went ahead to unclasp the shutters. As light came in, Ellie saw that a familiar bag had been placed at the foot of the bed.

“What on earth?”

“Madame asked me to arrange for your luggage to be brought from the hotel. She felt it would be easier if you stayed here for the remainder of your visit.”

“But—”

“The de Fayols know everyone on the island. It was very easily arranged.”

Ellie shook her head, knowing that she was beaten.

“Dinner is served at eight. Madame will receive you on the terrace at seven thirty for an
apéro
.”

The furniture in the room Jeanne had prepared was dark and heavy: a large wooden wardrobe and a matching chest of drawers, both ornately carved. A massive headboard, also carved to depict some complex scene, loomed over the bed, a small double, raised high off the floor. She tried it with a hand. It felt surprisingly soft. Her spirits rallied slightly.

First, though, she would leave a message for Sarah, to tell her—to tell someone—where she was.

She dug into her shoulder bag for her mobile. Then scrambled around deeper inside. It was not in her bag.

Heart pounding, she tried to think. Had she put the phone in her bag that morning? Yes, she remembered checking for it. Had she left the bag somewhere at any time? No, surely it had been with her all the time she was at the domaine. Had she put it down in the village where some opportunist thief had dipped into it?

Her travel bags were there on the floor. But they seemed deflated. She ripped the zip open and saw that half her clothes were missing. Sat back on her heels, head spinning. Then she got up and opened the wardrobe. Her few dresses and clean trousers were inside on padded silk hangers.

In a bathroom across the corridor skulked a huge roll-top bath and a tiled shower. The latter boasted a complicated arrangement of levers and taps that had not been updated for many years. Steam hissed into the room. She reached towards the taps with one outstretched arm, prepared to pull back if the temperature was scalding. But the vapour was freezing cold. Chilled and puzzled, she fiddled with the controls to no effect. In the end she stripped and ducked briefly under the cold stream of water, shivering as she washed quickly.

 

S
he was shown into a side room draped in heavy fabric. A pair of ruby glass urns held lighted candles. Reclining on a chaise longue like an ancient odalisque, Mme de Fayols put a finger to a decanter that rested on a mat of fine crochet work.

At this gesture, Jeanne moved forward and poured a purple tincture into a heavy, etched glass, then passed it to Ellie.

“Eau-de-vie—flavoured with myrtle,” said the old woman. “Try it!” She watched intently as Ellie raised the glass to her lips. “Myrtle from the garden. I steep the berries with honey in the local firewater, but the secret ingredient is the flower, added for the final day. Such a pretty white flower it is, drowned in purple for just one day.”

The liqueur tasted of stewed plums. Not unpleasant, but very strong. It went to Ellie's head after the first sip.

Jeanne moved forward with an oil lamp, casting light over cabinets and ornate display cases full of curiosities. Heavy Chinese antiques, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, stood awkwardly with delicate glass vases and chunks of whalebone engraved with maritime pictures.

The old lady followed Ellie's glances around the room. “The de Fayols family has lived here for three generations,” she said. “The doctor was a great collector and traveller. Not only artefacts. Botanical specimens too. Did Laurent tell you there was once an apothecary garden here?”

“Yes, he did. You speak excellent English, madame.”

Each time they had spoken, Mme de Fayols's command of the language had become more fluent.

She gave an unladylike snort of laughter at the compliment. “I'm not French—I'm British. Or I was, a very long time ago. Just as well you didn't say anything vile to Laurent, all the time thinking I couldn't understand, or had gone deaf or lost my marbles.”

“I wouldn't have,” mumbled Ellie.

“No, I don't suppose you would.” Some private amusement seemed to surge into her lizard eyes.

Now Ellie's ear was attuned to her accent, it seemed less foreign and more of an earlier era. The short vowels of aristocratic speech, rarely heard these days except in old British films and newsreels. “Orf,” she said, for
off
. “Said,” for
sad
. It was there, though barely more than an echo.

“Laurent is a very good son. He has had a commendable career in the civil service. Took his degree in
sciences politiques
at the Sorbonne in Paris, followed by one of the great admin schools so beloved of the French of a certain bureaucratic bent. His first wife divorced him, and his second wife is much younger, an arts administrator. Why would she want to give up Paris for a tiny speck of land off the coast? Fine for holidays but not much else. She is serious about her career, and more importantly for a woman, she is taken seriously.

“But when Laurent retired, he felt a pull to the island. And by then I could no longer live here alone.”