Michael cocked an eyebrow as he took in the dereliction of the room. ‘What’s a nice Aussie girl like you doing in a house like this?’
‘I inherited it. My grandmother left it to me.’
‘Your grandmother was English?’
‘Australian. She bought it in the seventies when she was on holiday.’
‘Some souvenir. Couldn’t she find a tea towel she liked?’
A noise at the door and Christian was back carrying a large chainsaw. ‘This the one you’re after?’
‘It’s a saw with a chain,’ said Michael, winking at Cassandra. ‘I’d say it’s the right one.’
The hall was narrow and Cassandra turned side-on to let Christian pass. She didn’t meet his eyes, rather pretended interest in a loose skirting board at her feet. The way Michael spoke to Christian made her feel embarrassed.
‘Chris is new to the business,’ said Michael, oblivious to Cassandra’s discomfort. ‘Doesn’t know his chainsaw from his drop-saw yet. He’s a bit of a greenie but we’ll turn him into a woodcutter yet.’ He grinned. ‘He’s a Blake, it’s in his blood.’ He gave his brother a playful punch and the two men turned their attention to the task at hand.
Cassandra was relieved when the chainsaw started up and she was free, finally, to escape back to the garden. Although she knew her time would be better spent clearing creepers from inside the house, her interest had been piqued. She was determined to find a way through that wall if it took all day.
The sun was high now and shade was at a premium. Cassandra unwrapped her cardigan and laid it on a nearby rock. The sun’s tiny footprints danced across her arms and the top of her head was soon hot to the touch. She wished she’d remembered to bring a hat.
As she searched the brambles, poked her hand gingerly through one gap after another, avoiding thorns, her thoughts drifted back to her dream. It had been particularly vivid and she could remember every detail—sights, smells, even the dream’s pervasive mood. Undeniably erotic, laced with forbidden desire.
Cassandra shook her head a little, shooing away the tendrils of confusing and unwanted emotion. She turned her thoughts instead to Nell’s mystery. The night before, she’d sat up late reading the notebook. A task that was easier said than done. If the rash of mould didn’t make things difficult enough, Nell’s deplorable handwriting had deteriorated further when she arrived in Cornwall. Longer, loopier, scratchier. Written faster, Cassandra was willing to bet, more excitedly.
Nonetheless, Cassandra was managing. She’d been spellbound by the account of Nell’s returning memories, her certainty that she’d visited the cottage as a little girl. Cassandra couldn’t wait to see the scrapbooks Julia had found, the diaries that Nell’s mother had once filled with her most private thoughts. For surely they would shed further light on Nell’s childhood, maybe even offer vital clues as to her disappearance with Eliza Makepeace.
A whistle, loud and shrill. Cassandra looked up, expecting a bird of some kind.
Michael was standing by the corner of the house, watching her work. He indicated the brambles. ‘Impressive crop you’ve got there.’
‘Nothing a bit of weeding won’t solve,’ she said, standing awkwardly. She wondered how long he’d been watching.
‘A year of weeding and a chainsaw.’ He grinned. ‘I’m off up to the hotel now.’ He cocked his head towards the cottage. ‘We’ve made some good headway. I’ll leave Chris to tie up loose ends. He should be able to manage, just make sure he leaves it how you’d like.’ He paused and smiled again in that artless way of his. ‘You’ve got my number, right? Give me a call. I’ll show you a few of the local sights while you’re in town.’
It wasn’t a question. Cassandra smiled slightly and regretted it immediately. She suspected Michael was the sort to read any response as agreement. Sure enough, he gave her a wink as he headed back towards the front of the house.
With a sigh, Cassandra turned back towards the wall. Christian had climbed through the hole made by the tree and was now perched on the roof, using a handsaw to cut the branches into lengths. Where Michael was easygoing, there was an intensity about Christian that seemed to spill into everything he did and touched. He shifted position and Cassandra looked away quickly, feigned an avid interest in her wall.
They continued working, and the silence strung between them amplified every other sound: Christian’s saw dragging back and forth; the pitter-patter of birds on the roof tiles; the faint noise of running water somewhere. Ordinarily, Cassandra was happy to work without speaking, she was used to being alone, preferred it for the most part. Only this wasn’t being alone, and the longer they pretended it was, the more static-filled the silence grew.
Finally she could stand it no longer. ‘There’s a wall behind here,’ she said, voice loud and somewhat more strident than she’d intended. ‘I found it earlier.’
Christian looked up from his stack of wood. Stared at her as if she’d just started quoting from the periodic table.
‘I don’t know what’s on the other side though,’ she rushed on. ‘I can’t find a gate and the plan my grandmother got with the sale gives no indication. I know there’s a heap of creepers and branches, but I thought you might be able to see from up there.’
Christian glanced down at his hands, seemed about to speak.
A thought popped into Cassandra’s mind: he has nice hands. She pushed it right back where it came from. ‘Can you see what’s over the wall?’
He pressed his lips together, dusted his hands on his jeans and nodded a little.
‘You can?’ This she hadn’t really expected. ‘What is it? Can you tell me?’
‘I can do better than that,’ he said, holding on to the eave so that he could jump down from the roof. ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’
The hole was very small, right at the bottom of the wall, and concealed so that Cassandra might have searched for a year and not found it. Christian was on his hands and knees, pulling the undergrowth aside. ‘Ladies first,’ he said, sitting back.
Cassandra looked at him. ‘I thought maybe there’d be a gate.’
‘You find one, I’ll follow you through it.’
‘You want me to . . .’ She glanced at the hole. ‘I don’t know if I can, if I even know how to . . .’
‘On your stomach. It’s not as tight as it looks.’
Of this Cassandra had some doubt. It looked very tight. All the same, the day’s fruitless searching had only strengthened her resolve: she needed to know what lay on the other side. She hopped down so she was eye level with the hole and looked sidelong at Christian. ‘Are you sure this is safe? You’ve done it before?’
‘At least a hundred times.’ He scratched his neck. ‘Sure, I was younger and smaller but . . .’ His lips twitched sideways. ‘I’m joking. I’m sorry, you’ll be fine.’
There was some relief once her head was free and she realised she wasn’t going to perish with her neck jammed beneath a brick wall. Not on the way in, at any rate. She shimmied the rest of her body through, as fast as possible, and stood up. Dusted her hands together and looked around, wide-eyed.
It was a garden, a walled garden. Overgrown but with beautiful bones visible still. Someone had cared for this garden once. The remains of two paths snaked back and forth, intertwined like the lacing on an Irish dancing shoe. Fruit trees had been espaliered around the sides, and wires zigzagged from the top of one wall to the top of another. Hungry wisteria tendrils had woven themselves around to form a sort of canopy.
Against the southern wall, an ancient and knobbled tree was growing. Cassandra went closer. It was the apple tree, she realised, the one whose bough had reached over the wall. She lifted her hand to touch one of the golden fruit. The tree was about five metres high and shaped like the Japanese bonsai plant Nell had given Cassandra for her twelfth birthday. Over the decades, the short trunk had adopted a sideways angle, and someone had gone to the effort of propping a crutch beneath a large limb to absorb some of its weight. A scorch mark
midway along suggested a lightning strike many years before. Cassandra reached out to run her fingers along the burn.
‘It’s magical, isn’t it, this place?’ Christian was standing in the centre of the garden by a rusted iron bench. ‘Even when I was a kid I could feel that.’
‘You used to come here?’
‘All the time. It felt like my secret spot. No one else knew about it.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, hardly anyone else.’
Beyond Christian, on the other side of the garden, Cassandra noticed something glinting against the creeper-covered wall. She went closer. It was metal, shining in the sun. A door. Ropelike tendrils draped across it, a giant web blocking the entrance to the spider’s lair. Or exit, as the case may be.
Christian joined her and together they pulled some of the brambles loose. There was a brass handle turned black with time. Cassandra gave it a rattle. The door was locked.
‘I wonder where it goes.’
‘There’s a maze on the other side that leads all the way through the estate,’ said Christian. ‘It ends over near the hotel. Michael’s been working to restore it these past months.’
The maze, of course. She had known that. Where had Cassandra read about the maze? Was it Nell’s notebook? One of the tourist brochures at the hotel?
A quivering dragonfly hovered near before darting away, and they turned back towards the centre of the garden.
‘Why did your grandmother buy the cottage?’ said Christian, brushing a fallen leaf from his shoulder.
‘She was born around here.’
‘In the village?’
Cassandra hesitated, wondering how much she should tell. ‘The estate, actually. Blackhurst. She didn’t know until her adoptive father died, when she was in her sixties. She found out her parents were Rose and Nathaniel Walker. He was—’
‘An artist, I know.’ Christian picked up a small stick from the ground. ‘I’ve got a book with his illustrations in it, a book of fairytales.’
‘Magical Tales for Girls and Boys?’
‘Yeah.’ He looked at her, surprised.
‘I have a copy too.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘There weren’t many printed, you know, not by today’s standards. Did you know Eliza Makepeace used to live right here in the cottage?’
Cassandra shook her head. ‘I knew she grew up on the estate . . .’
‘Most of her stories were written here in this garden.’
‘You know a lot about her.’
‘I’ve been re-reading the fairytales lately. I used to love them when I was a kid, ever since I found an old copy in the local charity shop. There was something bewitching about them, more than met the eye.’ He scuffed at the dirt with his boot. ‘It’s a bit sad, I guess—a grown man reading children’s fairytales.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Cassandra noticed that he was raising and lowering his shoulders, hands in pockets. Almost as if he were nervous. ‘Which one’s your favourite?’
He tilted his head, squinted a little in the sun. ‘“The Crone’s Eyes”.’
‘Really? Why?’
‘It always seemed different from the others. More meaningful somehow. Plus I had a wild eight-year-old crush on the princess.’ He smiled shyly. ‘What’s not to like about a girl whose castle is destroyed, her royal subjects vanquished, who nonetheless plucks up enough courage to embark on a quest and uncover the old crone’s missing eyes?’
Cassandra smiled too. The tale of the brave princess who didn’t know she was a princess was the first of Eliza’s fairytales she’d read. On that hot Brisbane day, when she was ten years old and had disobeyed her grandmother’s instruction, discovered the suitcase under the bed.
Christian broke his stick in half and tossed the pieces aside. ‘I suppose you’re going to try and sell the cottage?’
‘Why? Interested in buying it?’
‘On the wage Mike’s paying me?’ Briefly their eyes met. ‘Don’t hold your breath.’
‘I don’t know how I’m going to get it ready,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realise how much work there’d be. The garden, the house itself.’ She gestured over the southern wall. ‘There’s a hole in the bloody roof.’
‘How long are you here for?’
‘I’m booked at the hotel for another three weeks.’
He nodded. ‘That ought to be enough time.’
‘You reckon?’
‘Sure.’
‘Such faith. And you haven’t even seen me wield a hammer.’
He reached up to plait a stray piece of wisteria in with the others. ‘I’ll help you.’
Cassandra felt a flush of embarrassment: he thought she’d been hinting. ‘I didn’t mean . . . I don’t have . . .’ She exhaled. ‘There’s no restoration budget, none at all.’
He smiled, the first proper smile she’d seen him give. ‘I’m earning peanuts already. Might as well earn nothing working in a place I love.’
33
Tregenna, 1975
Nell looked out over the churning sea. It was the first overcast day she’d struck since arriving in Cornwall and the whole landscape was shivering. The white cottages clinging to cold crags, the silvery gulls, the grey sky reflecting the swollen sea.
‘Best view in all of Cornwall,’ said the estate agent.
Nell didn’t dignify the inanity with comment. She continued to watch the roiling waves from the little dormer window.
‘There’s another bedroom next door. Smaller, but a bedroom nonetheless.’
‘I need longer to inspect,’ said Nell. ‘I’ll join you downstairs when I’m done.’
The agent seemed happy enough to be dismissed and, within a minute, Nell saw her appear outside the front gate, huddling into her coat.
Nell watched as the woman did battle with the wind to light a cigarette, then she let her gaze drift down towards the garden. She couldn’t see much from up here, had to look through a frayed tapestry of creepers, but she could just make out the stone head of the little boy statue.
Nell leaned on the dusty window frame, felt the salt-roughened wood beneath her palms. She had been in this cottage before, as a child, she knew that now. She had stood at this very spot, in this room, watching the same sea. She closed her eyes and willed her memory into sharper focus.
A bed had stood where she was now, a single bed, simple, with brass ends, dulled knobs that needed polishing. From the ceiling, an inverted cone of netting fell, like the white mist that hung from the horizon when storms were stirring the distant sea. A patchwork quilt, cool beneath her knees; fishing boats bobbing on the tide, flower petals floating on the pond below.
Sitting in this window that jutted out from the rest of the cottage was like hanging from the top of the cliff, like the princess in one of her favourite fairytales, turned to a bird and left swinging in her golden cage—
Raised voices downstairs, her papa and the Authoress.
Her name, Ivory, sharp and jagged like a star cut from cardboard with pointed scissors. Her name as a weapon.
There were other angry words being hurled. Why was Papa shouting at the Authoress? Papa who never raised his voice.
The little girl felt frightened, she didn’t want to hear.
Nell clenched her eyes tighter, tried to hear.
The little girl blocked her ears, sang songs in her mind, told stories, thought about that golden cage, the princess bird swinging and waiting.
Nell tried to push aside the child’s song, the image of a golden cage. In the cold depths of her mind, the truth was lurking, waiting for Nell to clutch it and drag it to the surface . . .
But not today. She opened her eyes. Those tendrils were too slippery today, the water around them too murky.
Nell took herself back down the narrow stairs.
The agent locked the gate and together they started in silence down the path to where the car was parked.
‘So, what did you think?’ said the agent in the perfunctory tone of one who thought she knew the answer.
‘I’d like to buy it.’
‘Perhaps there’s something else I can—’ The agent looked up from the car door. ‘You’d like to buy it?’
Nell gazed again across the stormy sea, the misty horizon. She enjoyed a bit of inclemency in her weather. When the clouds hung low and rain threatened, she felt restored. Breathed more deeply, thought more clearly.
She had no idea how she’d pay for the cottage, what she’d have to sell in order to do so. But as sure as black and white made grey, Nell knew she had to own it. From the moment she’d remembered that little girl by the fish pond, the little girl who was Nell in a different lifetime, she’d known.
The agent drove all the way back to the Tregenna Inn with breathless promises to walk round with the contracts just as soon as she had them typed up. She had the name of a good solicitor Nell could use, too. Nell closed the car door and went up the steps to the foyer. She was so intent on her attempt to calculate the time difference—was it add three hours and change am to pm?—so she could call her bank manager and attempt to explain the sudden acquisition of a Cornish cottage, she didn’t see the person coming towards her until they almost collided.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Nell, stopping with a jolt.
Robyn Martin was blinking quickly behind her glasses.
‘Were you waiting for me?’ said Nell.
‘I brought you something.’ Robyn handed Nell a pile of papers clipped together. ‘It’s research for the article I’ve been working on about the Mountrachet family.’ She shifted awkwardly. ‘I heard you asking Gump about them, and I know he wasn’t able to . . . that he wasn’t much help.’ She smoothed already smooth hair. ‘It’s an odd assortment really, but I thought they might be of interest to you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Nell, meaning it. ‘And I’m sorry if I . . .’
Robyn nodded.
‘Is your grandfather . . . ?’
‘Much better. In fact, I was wondering whether you might come to dinner again, one night next week. At Gump’s house.’
‘I appreciate you asking me,’ said Nell, ‘but I don’t think your grandfather will.’