Sowing Secrets

‘It’s starting,’ Nia warned, and we stopped brushing bits of coconut off each other and turned to face the screen.

Helicopter-borne, the camera homed slowly in on a small Tudor manor house sitting inoffensively among a rolling, sheep-nibbled expanse of grass, with here and there a flight of stone steps or a section of herringbone-brick pathway.

There wasn’t much more garden left there than around Rhodri’s mini-mansion, Plas Gwyn, I thought, taking a bite of Bakewell tart and settling back. All Rhodri’s old gardener, Aled, had to do was drive round and round on his little sit-on mower and indulge his passion for clipping trees into strangely rude shapes.

‘Approaching Slimbourne Manor you might think that there never was a garden here at all, or if there ever was, that all trace had vanished,’ said a warm, deep voice with just the faintest, tantalising hint of a West Country burr.

A strange shiver ran down my back and I sat up and stared at the screen. I’d definitely heard that voice before somewhere, I was sure of it – maybe on some other gardening programme. It certainly wasn’t one you’d ever forget, with a mellow tone that made you think of dark, rich honey and folded tawny velvet … of a pint of best bitter with the sunlight shining through it, or the dappled gold-browns of a peaty stream bed, or … well, you get the idea. Even if the programme was no good I could see how the audience was hooked. I was half-mesmerised myself.

‘Yet, as we get closer,’ the velvety voice continued, ‘we start to notice clues: grand steps that once led somewhere and the remains of beautiful old brick pathways. The grass at the front of the house that looked so flat from high above, from an angle shows the bumps and hollows of a long-vanished knot garden. Slimbourne was once a jewel in a beautiful setting, and we are going to resurrect it!’

‘I don’t see how he can see anything there,’ I said sceptically, trying to shake off the near-hypnosis of that voice. ‘Perhaps he just makes it up.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Carrie, suddenly our instant resident expert, ‘apparently he has an absolute gift for garden design, a huge knowledge of the history of old gardens and a degree in archaeology! And, what’s more, he looked totally hunky in his photo.’

‘I don’t think people say “hunky” any more,’ observed Nia. ‘They say a man is “fit” or “well fit”.’

‘Then he looked well fit. More than well fit. Well fit with knobs on.’

‘I should hope so,’ I said, watching critically as Gabe Weston slowly approached us on the screen, escorting a tall and ancient lady dressed in mottled tweed trousers and an old cricket jumper, her long string of pearls trapped under one pendulous breast.

I jerked upright as though someone had run their finger down my spine, the half-eaten cake in one hand.

‘I’m lucky in having the assistance of Lady Eleanor Arkleforth, the owner of this lovely house, who has already researched the garden thoroughly in the family archives.’

‘Thank you,’ Lady Arkleforth said graciously. ‘I’m delighted to restore the grounds to some semblance of what they once were at last.’

‘I believe you’ve found a plan of how the garden looked originally?’ Gabe Weston prompted.

The camera finally fully focused on the gardener’s highly unusual face, but I could still see it clearly even when it moved on to the garden plan, because his image seemed to have been flash-burned into my retinas.

He had a strong chin, green-flecked hazel eyes rayed at the corners where he had screwed them up in laughter or against the sun, and the sort of Grecian nose you could open letters with. Rich, darkest-honey hair spiralled tightly round his face like a wet water spaniel’s.

‘Are you all right, Fran?’ Nia asked suddenly. ‘Only you look a bit startled. Your mouth’s open and you’ve gone awfully pale.’ She looked from me to the screen, where my nemesis had now reappeared in the flesh wearing one of those archaic winged smiles full of inner amusement. ‘Mind you, he is pretty stunning – he can dibble my beds any time!’

‘And mine!’ agreed Carrie enthusiastically.

‘Of course I’m all right,’ I croaked, though I was by no means certain I hadn’t suddenly flipped. ‘Would you really say he was good-looking? He’s not exactly handsome, is he?’

But distinctive; so very distinctive that a face whose features I had thought safely forgotten suddenly reclaimed its place in my memory, like the last piece of a puzzle locking into place.

‘Back track,’ I said urgently. ‘I think that’s Rosie’s father!’

Nia had replayed the DVD so Gabe Weston’s face was frozen in mid-smile like a mysterious male Mona Lisa, and just as informative.

‘It’s got to be him – there can’t be two men who look like that and have the same beautiful voice with a West Country accent,’ I said, feeling strangely breathless. ‘Unless I’m going crackers!’

‘You already are crackers,’ Nia said, ‘but I believe you. Only I thought his name was Adam?’

‘So did I.’

Carrie, who had been sitting looking totally bewildered, suddenly exclaimed, ‘Rosie’s father is Gabe Weston? But I thought it was Rhodri!’

‘Rhodri? Are you insane?’

‘But you were here all that summer working at Teapots, and thick as thieves with him!’ she said defensively.

‘We were old friends, and Nia was away most of that summer, so he was the first person I told when I realised I was pregnant – but not because he was the father!’

‘Well,’ Carrie said, ‘it wasn’t just me who got the wrong end of the stick, especially when he became Rosie’s godfather! I’m sure half the village still think it.’

‘They think wrong, then.’

She looked at me doubtfully. ‘But are you sure it was Gabe Weston? And if so, how come you never told him about Rosie?’

‘I’m sure – and it wasn’t an affair, it was a one-night stand.’

‘That doesn’t sound like you, Fran!’

‘I was drunk and I’d just split up with my boyfriend. All I knew about the man I slept with was that he was called Adam – which, as it turns out, was a lie – that he came from Devon and was a gardener. Even if I’d wanted to I couldn’t have found him from that information.’

‘And until now you had no idea who Gabe Weston was?’ Carrie said. ‘Well, isn’t that just amazing?’

‘Tragic, more like,’ Nia said. Then she set Gabe into motion and speech again and we all watched him silently, and in my case angrily, though I don’t know why. He hadn’t sneaked away without a word, it was me who’d done that. All he was guilty of was carelessness.

‘I don’t suppose he’s ever given me a thought since,’ I muttered bitterly.

‘But what about Rosie?’ Nia asked.

‘What about Rosie?’

‘You aren’t going to tell her who her father is, now you know?’

I shuddered. ‘Who her father probably is – and let’s not open that can of worms. You know what Mal’s like, and he’s always sort of assumed Rosie’s Tom’s baby. We’ve been through all that. And if I told Rosie who it was she might try and contact him and be rebuffed, which would be terribly hurtful. Things are better left as they are.’

‘And it sounds like there’s an outside chance she might not be his anyway,’ Carrie said helpfully. ‘So it would probably come down to DNA testing, and just imagine if the father really was your ex-boyfriend after all!’

‘Thanks for that thought, Carrie.’

‘It gets even better,’ Nia said. ‘Tom, Fran’s old boyfriend, has just emailed her and he wants to come and see her.’

‘Yes, but I didn’t answer, so he’s probably got the message,’ I said hopefully. ‘After all this time I don’t want either of them to pop back into my life and mess things up.’

I looked at the screen again. Gabe Weston was smiling, but then I expect he has a lot to smile about, being a successful TV personality. ‘He’s probably married with his own family by now,’ I mused aloud. ‘Even if Rosie were his he wouldn’t want to know.’

‘Divorced,’ said Carrie knowledgeably. ‘His only daughter lives with her mum in America, but his name’s been linked with quite a few other women since.’

‘I bet it has,’ Nia said drily.

Carrie regarded me admiringly: ‘Well, you’re a dark horse, Fran! It’s so romantic, just like The French Lieutenant’s Woman.’

‘I can’t see where The French Lieutenant’s Woman comes in,’ Nia said critically. ‘Gabe Weston looks more like Meryl Streep than Fran does.’

‘And I certainly haven’t been waiting for him to come back,’ I objected. ‘In fact, I’m going to try and forget I ever recognised him. Let’s just let sleeping gardeners lie – that’s seemed to work for me pretty well so far.’

‘Then perhaps you should stop humming “Look What You’ve Done to Me”?’ suggested Nia.

Mal phoned late that night after they’d gone home, and strangely enough I felt as guilty while I was talking to him as if I’d just spent the night with Adam the gardener all over again.

I would have liked to have blotted the memories out in Mal’s arms, but instead I simply had to obliterate them with leftover cake and a bar of chocolate.

Cool Runnings

In the early hours of this morning I got up, found a torch that worked and went to hide the Restoration Gardener DVD in my studio in the box marked ‘Miscellaneous’.

At that hour the oddest things seem strangely logical.

As I made my way back I saw the pallid glimmer of one of the Wevills watching me from their bedroom window, so I suppose this will go into their next report to Mal, along with my girlie night in transformed into some kind of orgy. I don’t know what made them look out at that time of night because I’m almost sure I wasn’t singing.

They must use mirrors on sticks to watch me some of the time – it’s the only way they can know so much about my movements – but fortunately my rose garden and studio are on the other side of the house, bordering the lane, so once I go through the pergola they’ve lost me unless they have radar.

After that I was wide awake, so I made some hot chocolate, got out the mosaic kit Ma’s cousin sent me for my birthday and started to transform the boring, dead-white-tiled fireplace in the sitting room. I could use some of that box of broken china in the studio too: I knew it would come in handy one day.

It was a chilly day even after the sun came up, so I took to running between the house and my studio with sandwiches and Thermos flasks, watched by the cold, bored hens.

My roses were all frozen in time like so many sleeping beauties, and glittered in the sunlight, although there were still deep-red flowers on my Danse du Feu until just before Christmas.

I felt a bit weak and trembly, as though I had received a severe shock … which, thinking about it, I suppose I had. But, in reality, nothing much has changed except I now know Adam’s real identity, so I firmly put it out of my head while I got on with my work.

I completed the final illustration for the calendar of a dog rose trailing over one of the half-ruined Fairy Glen grottoes, then began putting the finishing touches to the cover, which is taken from my studio in its thorny bower, rendered a bit more picturesque than it really is.

It was a good day’s work, and tomorrow I will be able to pack them up and send them off, together with some cartoons that I’ve got circulating; batches of them come and go in the post, some finding a home, some not. Two have just appeared in Private Eye, and three they didn’t want have been taken by the Oldie instead. I’ve got one or two other projects on the back burner, but the cartoons seem to be bringing in the most cash lately – perhaps because I’m constantly dashing them off between other things. Sheer volume.

This hit-and-miss aspect of my work drives Mal mad, since I never know how much money will be coming in, but I do religiously pay two-thirds of everything I make into our household account towards the bills. I know Mal earns a huge amount more than me – but then he spends a lot more than me too, on boats, cars, electrical gadgets, stamps, expensive wines and stupid stuff like that, while I pay my own car bills and support Rosie and the hens: the important things.

As the song (almost) says, the best things in life are free, though Mal certainly wouldn’t agree with that – and even our basic differences in the value we put on things inspires cartoons, so waste not, want not.

I’m going to start drawing an Alphawoman comic strip tomorrow now the calendar is finished, and I must buy enough meal replacement bars and shakes to get my diet off to a good start when I go into town to post my stuff.

Nia has summoned me to a Council of War at eleven in the morning at Teapots! Since Rhodri is coming too, I only hope it is a war on debt she means, and not something involving fire and her neighbours.

It will be good to see Rhodri again, though – and lucky that Mal is still away, since he is inclined to be jealous of any time I spend with my oldest friends. At first we tried to include him, but I think our shared history made him feel an uncomfortable outsider.

Just as well he spends so much time away or I wouldn’t even have the modest social life I enjoy now.

I decided not to tell him about the meeting when he called from sunny Swindon to remind me to take his suit to the cleaners, pick up his migraine prescription (he only gets migraine when he drinks red wine, so the answer to that one lies in his own hands) and purchase a birthday card and present for his mother.

Why me? She hates me! I still have to call her Mrs Morgan, and she never spends a night under the roof of the double-dyed Scarlet Woman – for not only did we marry in a registry office, which doesn’t count, but also I already had an illegitimate child! This makes it all the stranger that the only chink in her scales is her love for Rosie: she succumbed immediately, though don’t ask me why – you’d think only a mother could love such an obstreperous little creature. But love her she does, to the point where I’m sure she’s managed to forget that Rosie really isn’t her granddaughter at all.

She is also convinced that Mal and his first wife would have resumed their marriage by now if not for me, since they have remained in friendly contact over the years. In fact, they will probably meet up for lunch or dinner a couple of times while he is down there on this contract, but I am not in the least jealous … just illogically uneasy.

Seeing Alison again seems to make him dissatisfied with our life here together in St Ceridwen’s Well, although when he lived the high life in London he wanted to move to the country and chill out. But now he’s in the country he seems to be trying to live the consumer-driven high life again, so what’s that all about? He’s not going to turn into a middle-aged male weathercock, is he?

And another worrying thought: we’ve now been married about the same length of time as his first marriage lasted, so did I come with built-in obsolescence? Especially with the Wevills dripping their sly insinuations about me into his ear like a pair of Iagos.

I wish I wasn’t suddenly having all these worrying ideas.

And what do you buy a dragon for its birthday? Firelighters for damp mornings?

Inspiration! Spotted an advert in a magazine for a firm who will create a bouquet to reflect any message you want to send, together with a little booklet explaining the meanings of flowers and plants, so the recipient can have hours of harmless fun working it out.

I am trying to be subtle here, so no deadly nightshade or anything of that kind.

The dog rose, ‘pleasure mixed with pain’, perhaps? (Her son is the pleasure – to look at, at least – and she is the pain.)

After that, feeling rather put upon, I finally ordered a Constance Spry – ‘pink old rose form … luminous delicacy … myrrh scented’ – with my birthday garden tokens.

OK, I know that they’re prone to mildew and I haven’t got an inch of space left in my bit of the garden, but they are so very pretty that I’m sure Mal won’t mind if I put it near the patio somewhere. The scent would be heavenly when we are sitting out, and I could train it over the trellis round the door.

I won’t tell him, I’ll just dig a little tiny bed for it while he’s away and heel it in to see if he notices.

As I sealed the envelope with the order it occurred to me that I might be one of the last people in the country using cheques. Apart from one Switch card I don’t possess a single bit of plastic, although Mal more than makes up for it: when he opens his wallet it unfolds like a stiffly backed patchwork quilt.

Teapots is right next to the Holy Well and smack opposite the one smallish village car park. Inside it’s painted a brave, welcoming yellow, lined with shelves displaying Carrie’s collection of hundreds of teapots, and with red-checked tablecloths and fresh flowers on each table.

There are no menus: she bakes breads and pastries each morning as the fancy takes her, but doesn’t do hot food, because she isn’t interested in poaching eggs and deep-frying chips. I admire that – she only cooks what she enjoys, the way I only do gardening involving roses. Her Welshcakes are superb.

The room was already half full, even though it was too early in the season for the coach parties who come to visit the Holy Well and Rhodri’s house, Plas Gwyn. The café’s popular all the year round, not just for tourists but with the locals too.

Did I say that Carrie is originally American? I tend to forget, and you can hardly tell from her accent, which I suppose must have worn off over thirty years here in St Ceridwen’s. She arrived as a hippie with a rucksack, guitar and a notebook full of recipes and never left, except for closing up for a month every November and going back to visit friends and relatives in the States.

She’s very popular in the village, maybe because it’s seen as a sort of compliment that she has elected to live here, bringing in tourists and money. Even her attempts to speak Welsh are treated with benign tolerance, though her grasp of the language is excruciatingly formal and grammatically old-fashioned, like someone talking the most impeccable Elizabethan English. ‘Prithee, wouldst thou like thy Olde Welshe Cream tea with jam or, mayhap, honey from mine own hive?’ That sort of thing.

But we all love Carrie, she’s so unsquashably bouncy and cheerful. (And she knows everything about everyone, having been conducting a part-time affair with the village postman, Huw, for about a quarter of a century.)

She was presiding behind the counter when I arrived, and smiled and pointed to where Rhodri and Nia were sitting at a corner table, arguing.

Nothing new there – they’ve always argued, but it’s mostly Nia’s fault; she’s so prickly, and has this big chip on her shoulder about being a quarryman’s daughter, while he is the lord of the manor – as if Rhodri ever cared about stuff like that.

Although we’ve always kept in touch, I hadn’t seen Rhodri to talk to properly for absolutely ages, but as soon as I saw his pinkish face under the unruly thatch of burned-straw hair light up at the sight of me, it was as though we’d never been apart. It’s the same with Nia: whenever we meet we just pick up where we left off, and that’s the sign of true friendship, I think.

He sprang to his feet – he has such beautiful manners, and this lovely posh but friendly voice. ‘Fran!’ he said, giving me a hug and a kiss on both cheeks. ‘You look wonderful!’

It was more than I could say about him; he was looking not only older but sadder, like the poor lion in The Wizard of Oz. He has a wide blunt nose and straight, thick fair eyebrows over his pale blue eyes, which add to the resemblance.

‘Sit down, Fran,’ ordered Nia bossily. ‘Carrie’s bringing coffee and Danish pastries over, so you don’t have to order. We need to get on.’

‘With what?’ I asked, sitting down and thinking it was just as well I hadn’t actually started the diet yet.

‘Sorting out Rhodri’s far-fetched plans to turn Plas Gwyn into some kind of kiddies’ Camelot theme park.’

‘Oh, now,’ protested Rhodri, ‘that’s not fair! I never said anything like that! Just that I wanted to open the house up to the public all season – maybe even all year – and perhaps have a tearoom and gift shop to try and make a bit of money to live on. And I only mentioned the possibility of having a Camelot-inspired children’s playground.’

‘Forget it,’ advised Nia. ‘That’s not the way you should be going. Plas Gwyn isn’t a holiday camp, it’s a historic gem in the middle of nowhere, and you need to attract the type of visitor who already comes to St Ceridwen’s to see the Holy Well, only more of them.’

‘I think Nia’s probably right about that,’ I agreed. ‘I’m sure lots of people would come to Plas Gwyn if it was on the historic houses list, because it’s so beautiful, but at the moment they can only see it at weekends in July and August, which restricts your visitor numbers a bit. But if you open it to the public all year where are you going to live?’

‘In the new wing,’ Rhodri said. ‘It’s where I spend most of my time anyway, since it’s the only part with modern plumbing or anything remotely civilised.’

The new wing is mainly seventeenth century, which gives you some idea of how old the old part is.

‘I can close the doors off on all the floors between the two wings of the house to make it private. And I thought I could take any modern furniture out of the old house and put it in the attic, where there’s loads of stuff that I can use to furnish it back into period style … or maybe each room in a different period. I’m not sure yet.’

‘Eclectic can look good too,’ suggested Nia. ‘It gives some idea of a family living in the house over centuries. And it’s a good idea to rent out the Great Hall as a wedding venue eventually, but you need more – and turning some of the stable buildings round the courtyard into craft workshops, a gift shop and a tearoom would not only bring more people to visit, but give you some income all the year round.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Carrie, who had arrived with the coffee and was unashamedly listening in. ‘And I can supply your tearoom with cakes and pastries and my Welsh honey – in fact, it can be an off-shoot of Teapots and then it’s not competition, just extra profit!’ She wandered off again, notebook in hand, to take an order.

Rhodri was looking slightly dazed. In the past the Gwyn-Whatmires had never been averse to making money, but poor Rhodri doesn’t seem to have inherited the knack. ‘That all sounds great – but I can’t afford to do much more than any basic building work and garden clearance that’s needed to start with.’

‘We were just talking about the garden when you arrived, Fran,’ Nia said with a sudden glower at poor Rhodri. ‘I’ve told him about your mam wanting to sell Fairy Glen, and since it was once part of the Plas Gwyn estate I think he should buy it back and make it into an extra attraction.’

‘I think fairy glens went out with the Victorian day-trippers,’ I said dubiously. ‘I mean, I know it was terribly popular in its day, and all credit to the Gwyn-Whatmire of the time for walling it off from the estate and flogging it, and to whoever put in the paths and grottoes and made the tea garden, but it’s all gone back to wilderness now.’

‘Well, I think you’re wrong,’ Nia said firmly. ‘But you could at least make an offer for the oak woods and the standing stones up at the top of the glen, Rhodri – they’re part of your heritage.’

‘Yes, but Fran’s right. It was all walled off with the glen and it’s part of it now,’ he objected. ‘And it would cost a fortune to restore. I’m more concerned with hanging on to Plas Gwyn itself.’

‘But we don’t want more weekenders buying it and stopping us walking in the glen,’ Nia said firmly, which is something that I hate the thought of too: it’s such a special place to both of us, and seemingly vital to whatever Nia does up there. (This involves a robe, a strange little knapsack and a long staff and, just once, some kind of interment – but I’ve decided not to speculate on that one … too much. Now I just turn and creep away if she’s there.)