Arwen
13 May 1919
The Spanish flu was no respecter of youth or strength: it preyed on the young and healthy as avidly as on the frail and elderly.
My mother had been a good twenty years younger than Papa, a tall, sturdy, fair Yorkshirewoman, full of vitality, yet her life blew out like a snuffed candle within days of contracting the vile illness. Papa, shattered by her loss, did not even try to put up any resistance. After his death, I discovered that he had given some thought to what might happen to me, his only child, although when the solicitor, Mr Browne, explained things to me after the funeral, I wished he had not!
Mr Browne, a small, wiry man with frizzled hair the colour of dust, and with eyes to match, accompanied us back to my lodgings, together with my friend Milly, who was staying with me, and Mama’s friend Mrs Clark, who had been providing support and good advice.
There, once Mrs Clark had made tea and then tactfully retired, the solicitor proceeded to explain things to me.
He had already taken on himself the arrangements for the funeral and used what little money my father had left to disburse the more urgent of our debts. Everything other than my personal possessions was to be sold off to pay the rest, and our lodgings and Papa’s studio taken over by another artist, a friend of his.
I had begged Milly to stay with me while Papa’s will was read, and once I had thrown off the borrowed black coat that Mrs Clark, a stickler for observing proprieties, had insisted upon, Mr Browne eyed my short, bright blue plaid dress with some disapprobation. I was sure he was equally shocked by Milly’s emerald-green skirt and blouse, and our daringly short cropped hair.
He cleared his throat, which I expect was just as dusty as the rest of him, after sitting in an office full of ancient papers every day, year after year, and began.
‘I have your father’s will here, Miss Madoc, which is a simple document stating that once all debts have been repaid, the residue of his estate goes to you. Since, as I have already informed you, most of his income derived from an annuity, which ceased at his death, I am afraid there will be very little money left over, even after everything is sold.’
‘I knew about the annuity and of course, with his deteriorating health over the last couple of years, his portrait commissions had dwindled,’ I said.
I did not add that ever since I turned fourteen and the tremor in Papa’s hands had begun to be a problem, I myself had taken an increasing role in completing the final details of his portraits, for I had a great facility for copying any style of painting or artist.
In Papa’s case, while he was still much influenced in his work by the Impressionist style of his youth, he was not unaware of the various more avant-garde groups of young painters that had sprung up around us in London.
A Post-Impressionism exhibition he had taken me to in 1910 had inspired great admiration in my young mind, and he had also frequently let me accompany him on visits to the studios of his friends.
Of course, I had no desire to pursue a career as a mere copyist, for I aspired to develop my own style and become an artist in my own right, and to this end had been studying at the Slade School of Art for the last two years, since I was sixteen, although I had been largely absent since Mama died in February.
I felt a yearning to escape from my grief back into my work and, now the war was finally over, there were so many exciting things going on as newer and younger artists explored our modern world. I wanted to be part of that.
Mr Browne gave his dry cough again to get my attention, and I realized I had let my thoughts wander a long way from the reason we were here. I was suddenly struck once again by the devastating blow of my double loss and I blinked away tears and said: ‘I’m so sorry – did you ask me something?’
He looked at me more benignly: clearly a rush of womanly tears was more to his taste than stoicism.
‘I was merely remarking that it was convenient that your father’s friend wishes to take over the studio and lodgings and purchase the furnishings, once you have removed any personal effects you wish to keep. And Mr Timmins, the art dealer, will shortly come to examine your father’s remaining artworks and make an offer for them.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed, but did not tell him that I had already removed to my own room certain treasures from the studio, including Papa’s large Japanned tin paintbox and two small oil portraits, one of Mama, and the other of myself at fifteen.
‘Mrs Clark is being so kind, helping me to sort what must be disposed of, and what to keep – as has my dear friend Milly.’
I smiled at Milly, whose square and somewhat pugnaciouslooking face broke into a gamine grin, although Mr Browne cast her a doubtful look.
I think her independence of manner, combined with her bright red curls, green eyes and the brevity of her skirt, a scant two inches below the knee, all combined to alarm him.
He said: ‘It is a relief to me that you already realize how little you will have to live on once everything is settled, but I am here to reassure you that you need have no worries for the future, for your father had put arrangements into place in case he should die while you are still a minor.’
‘I’m eighteen and quite capable of fending for myself,’ I said indignantly.
The solicitor’s smile was infuriatingly like one you would give to a child.
‘But my dear Miss Madoc, you will not be of age until you are twenty-one, and until then you will have a guardian – your father’s distant cousin, Cosmo Caradoc.’
In the stunned silence that followed Mr Browne’s announcement, Milly turned and stared at me.
‘I never knew you were related to Cosmo Caradoc.’
I had been vaguely aware of it and, since he was a renowned artist, I’d always supposed painting ran in the family . . . although, of course, Papa was much older than he, and less well known.
‘It isn’t a close connection. Papa used to spend the school holidays at the family home in North Wales and told me stories about it. Mama and Papa used to dine with Mr Caradoc on the rare occasions when he was in town, but I have never met him.’
‘They say he has become quite a recluse now,’ said Milly. ‘I did once see him at a Royal Academy exhibition – very tall and
handsome, with curling black hair and deep-set dark eyes. Of course, he must be quite old now.’
‘I believe Mr Caradoc to be little more than forty, at most,’ put in Mr Browne quellingly. That did seem quite a great age to me.
‘Your father wrote to Mr Caradoc at the time he made this will, and he agreed to be named as your guardian in the event of your father’s demise before you reached your majority. I immediately wrote to him when this sad event happened and he was most prompt in his reply, also enclosing a letter for you.’
He took out a heavy cream envelope, the flap sealed with red wax imprinted with a strange symbol – three rabbits or hares, seemingly connected together by their ears, inside a circle.
‘As your guardian, he wishes you to reside with him at his family home, Triskelion, in Wales. He is a widower with one daughter of around your own age. An elderly female relation lives there also.’
I stared at him, my letter unopened.
‘Go to live in Wales?’ I echoed.
I knew of my Welsh heritage, but it was a foreign country to me, who had ventured no further from London than could reasonably be reached for a day’s sketching with a party of friends.
Recovering from my surprise I said firmly, ‘But that is quite impossible – and in any case, I have already made my own plans.’
‘My dear Miss Madoc, you are only eighteen and have no income, or nearer relatives, so you should be grateful that your guardian offers you a home.’
‘I expect it’s very kind of him, even though unnecessary.’
‘I have finished my own studies at the Slade,’ put in Milly, who was two years older than I. ‘My brother, who is also an artist, and I intend moving to Cornwall, where we find the scenery very inspiring and where we know of several artists settled near St Ives. Arwen will make her home with us there. We are looking for a
suitable property and, until then, the aunt with whom we live in London is happy for Arwen to stay at her flat, too.’
‘And will this aunt also move to the country with you?’
‘Oh, no,’ said Milly. ‘She never stirs out of town.’
Mr Browne looked quite taken aback. ‘I am afraid that sounds perfectly unsuitable, Miss Madoc, and I am very sure your guardian would not agree to it! I think,’ he added, ‘you had better read his letter.’
I broke the strange seal and read the letter, finding that although the tone was somewhat autocratic, my new guardian did seem to know about my desire to become an artist and was in sympathy with it.
He began by expressing his condolences, but also his willingness to offer me a home at Triskelion.
‘I know from your father’s letters that you are a talented artist and I think you will find the scenery of North Wales quite inspiring. The nearby fishing village of St Melangell and our own small hamlet of Seren Bach seem to be becoming quite a little artists’ colony.
My daughter, Beatrice, looks forward to welcoming a companion of her own age.
Arrangements for your transport here have fallen out fortunately, for the relative who resides with us, Mrs Maude Fry, happens to be passing back through London on Friday the 30th, after paying a visit to a connection in Sussex, and I will make arrangements for you to travel here with her.’
I looked up from this, feeling like a mere parcel whose delivery must be arranged as conveniently as possible and said, firmly, ‘I’m afraid Mr Caradoc’s plans are quite impossible, even though I am
sure kindly meant. I’ll reply, informing him that I have made other arrangements.’
‘My dear child, I don’t think you have entirely grasped the situation,’ Mr Browne said. ‘Cosmo Caradoc is now your legal guardian and you must fall in with his wishes. Indeed, I think you should be grateful that he offers to take you into his home.’
‘Well, I’m not, because I have no need of his generous offer,’ I said stubbornly. I was finding being addressed like a halfwitted child very wearing to the temper. ‘I will write and tell him so, and I expect he will be quite happy to be relieved of the responsibility.’
Of course, Mr Browne had a lot more to say, but once he had finally taken himself off, I settled down to write to my new, and unwanted, guardian, stating my own plans, although thanking him for his offer.
Milly, once she had read Mr Caradoc’s letter too, was just as indignant as I was, but much less sanguine about the outcome.
‘Here we are in the twentieth century, with the fight for female emancipation by brave women like my aunt and your mama well advanced, yet Mr Browne made it quite clear that you could still be legally handed over to a guardian like a parcel, until you are of age!’
‘We will see what Mr Caradoc says in reply to my letter. Perhaps he has as little desire to have me foisted upon him as I have to go there and will be glad to hear that I have already plans in place of my own.’
Unfortunately, Milly’s doubts proved correct, as Cosmo Caradoc’s reply to my letter made very clear.
He did, however, soften the tone of his reply by saying that he understood my desire to continue with my studies, which I could well do in his own studio.
‘Maybe it won’t be so bad, although I hate to think of you going so far away,’ Milly consoled me. ‘But perhaps Edwin and I can come and stay nearby for a week or two in the early autumn, once we have made our move and settled in.’
Edwin had recently viewed a Cornish property, Smuggler’s Cottage in Lamorna, and declared it just what they wanted, so once Milly had been to see it, and approved, they might very soon be moving there . . . and I so wished I was going with them.
‘That would be wonderful,’ I said, for as well as missing my best friend, I had had a secret crush on Milly’s tall, languid and handsome elder brother for quite some time and of late, now he was not so much occupied with his work as a war artist (he had been unfit for active service), he had seemed to regard me as something more than just his sister’s younger friend . . .
Mind you, I found his ideas on the subject of Free Love rather alarming and, as Mama had sensibly said when I’d broached this topic to her, love was only free for men, for women would pay the price in social ostracism and children born out of wedlock. Papa, who was of an older generation, most certainly would not have approved, even though he had been as one with Mama over the subject of female emancipation.
‘I suppose it is a great opportunity to work in the studio of Cosmo Caradoc,’ I conceded. ‘But not for a whole three years, till I come of age! I will have to make that quite plain from the outset.’
Milly grinned, knowing my stubborn and opinionated nature. ‘I expect he will very soon be glad to get rid of you, and since you will be able to make your home with us in Cornwall, he can do so with a clear conscience.’
‘I wish I could just move there with you straight away. It would be such fun,’ I sighed.
‘Perhaps by the time we visit you, Mr Caradoc will have had quite enough of you and be happy to let you come back with us,’ she suggested. ‘I will be glad of your company, for although I intend living in Cornwall all year round, it seems Edwin now means to divide his time between there and London for the sake of his career.’
I knew Edwin was ambitious and aspired to be elected a member of the Royal Academy one day, so despite his bohemian views this was not altogether a surprise. Milly had begun to make her own way with her brilliant woodcut illustrations and could, as she said, work anywhere.
‘I will miss both of you so much,’ I said, blushing a little as I always did at the thought of Milly’s brother. ‘But I am determined we will not be separated for long. After all,’ I added, ‘I could always wind all Papa’s elderly friends around my little finger and I don’t see why Mr Caradoc should be any different.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ Milly said doubtfully, ‘but nor do I want to be parted from you for three years – that would be quite unbearable – so if the worst comes to the worst, we will just have to aid and abet you to run away to Cornwall!’
1 Country Retreat
Monday 23 March 2020
It was a chilly March morning, but despite that, I’d opened the window to let in the pale golden sunshine and to air the sitting room.
My cat, Mrs Snowboots – so called because her four white feet stood out against her black coat – had taken advantage of the fine day to go out into the small front garden. She was timid and elderly, so wouldn’t stray on to the lane, which was little more than a tarmacked loop of track from the main road and served only my house and a farm at the other end, where it rejoined it.
I sat on the wide window seat and wished I could as easily open a window in my head to let out all the bad memories and thoughts . . . and the flashbacks to the accident: especially those.
The click of the gate latch jerked me back to the present and I looked up quickly, wondering who my visitor could be. Mrs Snowboots quickly slid back in through the window, with an indignant hiss.
The Christmas Retreat
It certainly wouldn’t be Will, at any rate, now I knew that he didn’t so much have feet of clay, but of caked mud. I just hoped it wasn’t the police, coming back again to question me about the accident . . .
I shuddered, hoping I’d never have to relive that dreadful night again. The flashbacks and nightmares were more than enough to cope with.
But to my relief my visitor was neither of those, for round the lilac bushes came the familiar figure of Eli Graham, my neighbour, accompanied by his black and white collie, Dash.
Although he was my nearest neighbour, Eli lived over half a mile away, in the direction of the village of Mossing, and his arrival always sent Mrs Snowboots into flight. She was sheltering behind me now, still hissing like a sputtering kettle.
It was Dash she didn’t like, even though he only wanted to be friends. I suspected she’d had brushes with less friendly dogs in her previous life, before we found each other at the cat rescue centre.
I leaned over to open the window wider and, as my sleeve brushed the pot of blue hyacinths next to me, they released their heady fragrance.
Eli came to a stop a few feet away and Dash immediately sat down and leaned against his legs, looking up at his master adoringly.
‘What light from yonder window breaks?’ he said sardonically in an accent that was still Brummie, even after living in the Bedfordshire countryside for over forty years.
He was a tall, square man with ruffled short white hair, bright sky-blue eyes and a permanently weather-beaten complexion from working on his smallholding. He wore, as always, dungarees under a rough, tweedy jacket with sagging pockets.
I managed a smile, even if it did feel as if I was forcing cardboard into intricate origami.
‘Hi, Eli. I wasn’t expecting you – or anyone else, come to that.’
‘Well, I need to know what you want delivered tomorrow, Ginny, don’t I? Seems like it might have changed.’
‘Delivered?’ I repeated stupidly. Could it really only have been a fortnight since I’d last seen Eli? But then I realized it must be, for it was ten long days since the accident, followed by Will telling me he was leaving for good, as I now knew he’d already planned to do, while he still could.
‘But the lockdown, Eli?’ I said. ‘I mean, we aren’t supposed to go anywhere or see other people, are we?’
‘You can see them, Ginny, so long as you don’t go near them,’ he assured me. ‘And the hens keep laying – they don’t know any different – and I suppose we all still need to eat.’
‘I expect we do,’ I agreed, although I wasn’t entirely sure I’d ever feel hungry again. Eating, since the day I broke up with Will, had meant brief fuelling stops, mostly cereal or toast, forced down with endless cups of Earl Grey tea. I was now running short on that, too; it was definitely time I pulled myself together.
Eli delivered eggs, honey and a box of vegetables every fortnight, although since Will had left soon after he’d brought the last one, most of it was still mouldering in the veg rack.
‘I saw a van go past over a week ago and wondered if you’d moved back to London to sit out the lockdown, but Josie said no, you were still here, but on your own.’
Josie was the postwoman . . . and in the country, however isolated you are, there are always people watching what you do. Or perhaps it’s just because it is so isolated that everyone takes a keen interest in the smallest details of each other’s lives?
‘No, it was Will who was moving his stuff back to London, and he’s not coming back.’
Eli regarded me for a moment, not without sympathy, then said practically, ‘So you won’t be needing two dozen eggs and the large veg box then?’
I shook my head. ‘A dozen eggs and a small one, please – and a jar of honey,’ I said, for, after all, I might feel like cooking and eating at some point, and Eli’s produce was all organic and far better than anything from a supermarket.
‘I’ll leave them on the step tomorrow, then. Put out any empty boxes for me.’
‘OK, and the money, of course. Do you want me to leave that in a bowl of vinegar?’
The sky-blue eyes stared at me. ‘Why would I want my money smelling of fish-and-chip shops?’
‘It’s what they did at the time of the Black Death. It was supposed to kill the germs.’
‘I think I’ll just take my chance with the money, thanks,’ Eli said. He made a note of my order in his notebook and then tucked it away in the front pocket of his dungarees, the pencil attached to it with a bit of string hanging over the top and swinging like a pendulum.
‘I was starting to worry that Will might bring the plague here with him when he came back for the weekends,’ I confided. ‘And I couldn’t understand why he was leaving it so late to move everything he needed here and start working from home, because I’m sure you can design computer games anywhere, even if the broadband here is a bit slow.’
I stopped, wondering why I was telling Eli all this, but it just sort of bubbled up and gushed out.
‘I witnessed a bad road accident a few days ago and . . . a woman died in it.’
‘Was that the one over near Old Warden?’ he asked with interest. ‘Nasty – they said in the local paper that the woman who died was a well-known artist, but I can’t say I’d ever heard of her and I’ve forgotten her name now.’
‘Annie Ashwin,’ I supplied. ‘I had heard of her, and also I once met her husband, the poet and bestselling literary novelist Rhys Tarn, at a publisher’s party.’
Of course, I hadn’t at the time realized he was married . . .
I paused and swallowed hard. Realizing who the woman in the crash was had somehow made it all so much worse.
‘I came on the accident just after it had happened and she was still alive. It was a terrible experience, Eli. When I got home I was in such a state of shock that I tried to get hold of Will in London, to see if he could come home . . . and that’s when the fiancée of the friend whose spare room he’s supposedly been renting during the week told me he’d moved out months ago to live with another woman.’
‘Bastard,’ said Eli consolingly. ‘Didn’t deserve you.’
‘When he finally answered his phone, he said he’d intended moving out of the cottage that weekend anyway and would be bringing a van to take his stuff back. So I said he’d find it all in the garage and I didn’t want to see him.’
‘Better without him. He was a fish out of water down here,’ Eli said, which was true. Will had spent every weekend playing computer games or watching endless box sets and complaining that you couldn’t get take-away food delivered to Wisteria Cottage.
‘You give me a ring, Ginny, if you need help with anything.’
‘You are so kind – thank you!’ I said gratefully, feeling a sudden rush of hot tears to my eyes.
I blinked them back and managed another smile – or a near facsimile of one. I’d come to depend on Eli quite a bit since I’d bought Wisteria Cottage a few years before. He knew all the local news and was a fount of knowledge about gardening matters, while I had been a complete novice.
‘I’ll be off, then,’ he said, and Dash immediately stood up, tail wagging, as if he understood every word Eli said, which he probably did.
I suppose I’d unburdened myself to Eli because there just wasn’t anyone else to tell, other than my cat, and while Mrs Snowboots was a good listener, she was a bit wanting in the advice department.
Of course, there was Evie. I usually call my mother by her Christian name (unless I want to annoy her, when I call her Ma) because she is the least maternal woman you could ever meet, but she had, quite literally, flown in the face of reason, setting out on her latest lecture tour of the States a few weeks ago.
She was a well-known academic. ‘Feisty feminist art historian Evie Chase’, as the tabloids called her, after a TV series she made called Reassigned Brilliance, in which she conclusively proved that ten major artworks ascribed to men had actually been created by their female – and lesser known – contemporaries.
She was extroverted, brilliantly clever, argumentative and confrontational, all the things I most definitely was not, so that I was always deeply thankful that, being still technically married to my father at the time of my birth, she had, in a quixotic moment, registered me as Ginny Chase Spain. I’d
quickly dropped any mention of the name Chase, especially when my first children’s book was published.
My American father never knew about me and died when I was about two. Evie’s idea of a bedtime story had been to tell me my father was a kind of obscure genie, who had vanished into a bottle and never came out again. But later she opened up a bit about one crazy summer she spent in New York, when she had fallen in love for the first – and last – time, with my handsome, romantic-looking poet father, Leigh Spain.
Then, as she put it, somewhere between the wedding in what passed for a registry office over there, and the hotel where they were to entertain a few friends to a celebratory dinner, before flying off to Bermuda on honeymoon, she realized she had made an error of judgement.
‘It was as if I’d been in a dream and woken up. The clincher was, when we went up to the honeymoon suite to change and he fell on the drinks cabinet instead of on me. I mean, I didn’t mind coming second to his muse – because he was a very good poet, after all – but I wasn’t playing second fiddle to a fermented beverage! So I told him I had a headache and would take some aspirin and follow him down in a little while. Then I picked up my bags, left for the airport and was on a flight to London before he or any of his equally lush friends had thought to check up on me.’
It was made clear that I was an unexpected and late bridal gift, arriving just before her divorce came through, but having, as she put it, popped me out between a lecture tour and the completion of a new book, she installed a competent nanny in her London flat and carried on her life exactly as before. As they came up for sale, she had bought the flat next to hers and the basement and expanded into them.
I’d been curious about my father as I grew up. Evie gave me a book of his poetry, which she said was very good even if the author proved to have as much emotional depth as could be contained in a teaspoon.
That had made me wonder if writers and artists could create work that was deeper and more emotionally complex than they were themselves.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Evie, when I asked her in one of the rare moments when she was both at home and giving me her full attention. I supposed, being an art historian, she would know.
‘In your father’s case,’ she had added, ‘it was in vino veritas.’
Now, sitting there on the window seat at Wisteria Cottage, my thoughts seemed to have wandered a long way back, to the time when Liv, the cool, competent young woman originally employed by Evie as my nanny, had provided the core stability in my life as I grew up, and Evie came and went like a minor hurricane.
Liv was still there in the London flat, and now the lynchpin of Evie’s existence, since she had become housekeeper, PA and so much more over the years.
While I knew Liv was fond of me, despite her undemonstrative nature, if I had told her about the accident and Will leaving me for someone else, she would simply have urged me to close up the cottage and move back to the London flat before lockdown began, while everything in me was urging me in the opposite direction: at the moment, all I wanted was to shut myself away with my cat and possibly never come out of my burrow again.
Confiding in Eli had done me good, however, and I could feel the dark clouds lifting.
I thought of Dorothy Parker and how she said we might as
well live, although that was written about suicide, which was not an option that had ever appealed to me. I mean, there’s no certainty you’ll like the next place any more than this, is there?
I could feel myself coming back from the shocked, cold, shivery state I’d been in for the last ten days and I determined that I was never going to slip back there again. It was as if I’d been moving in a muted black-and-white world and now, quite suddenly, a tide of warmth and colour had rushed back in.
I looked around the usually cosy sitting room, seeing it clearly for the first time in days, and found it cold and forlorn.
The small log burner held only long-dead ashes and there was a litter of empty glasses and mugs on the coffee table. My stock of home-made wine had taken a bit of a hit.
When I stacked all the crockery on a tray and took it through to the kitchen, I found that in little better state. The sink was piled with dishes, the fridge empty of fresh food other than a hard nub of Parmesan cheese and a couple of covered bowls containing furry green mould.
‘Grow your own penicillin, the new cottage industry,’ I said to Mrs Snowboots, who had followed me in.
As to my little studio off the kitchen, I hadn’t even opened the door since everything had happened. I did now, hoping to let creativity flow back in.
Mrs Snowboots called me back with a few pungent-sounding remarks that were probably to the effect that I needed to get a grip – and she was quite right.
‘It’s just you and me, kid,’ I told her in a mock cowboy drawl, reaching for a notepad and a pen to make a shopping list.
‘Now, what super-expensive gourmet cat dinners would you like to turn your nose up at next week?’
Eden’s End
November 2022
October finally blew itself out, but only after blasting the fat balls out of the spring holders attached to the bird table and playing billiards with them across the little square of lawn at the back of the house.
Mrs Snowboots would have watched the skittering fat balls with fascination, but my poor old cat, after fading away like an ancient snapshot before my very eyes, was no more.
While her death was not unexpected, finding one morning that she had quietly passed away in her sleep had still been a shock and it would take some time for me to come to terms with her loss.
Eli had helped me bury her beneath the sweet-scented rose just outside the studio window . . . but now, looking down at the solicitor’s letter in my hand, I wondered if I would still be here when the rose flowered next summer.
Suddenly I fully understood the phrase ‘reality check’, because I was aware that dark clouds had been gathering over my head without my even noticing them, secure in my idyll.
In fact, when I looked back on the last couple of years, it was odd how little I remembered about what I’d done during them, other than vignettes, such as watching badgers in the woods at dusk, or Mrs Snowboots trying to wash the baby rabbits that emerged on the lawn in spring. The annual seasonal round of making jams, chutneys and fruit wines, of bottling plums from the old tree, was a blur . . . as were the happy hours spent working in my studio, lost in the fantasy world I’d created inside my everyday one, like one of those carved ivory Chinese puzzle spheres whose inner layers could be turned separately, worlds within worlds.
I suppose, as the old sundial in the middle of my lawn said, I remembered only the happy hours, so perhaps that was why what memories I had of working in the studio always showed the golden sun slanting through the window, where Mrs Snowboots lay in its warmth, sleepily watching me.
In fact, I now realized that, without meaning to, I’d become the nearest thing to a recluse possible in this day and age.
Of course, I’d wanted a quiet country life. It had been the seclusion of Wisteria Cottage that had first drawn me to it. Once the gardener’s cottage by the rear gates to Brocklebank Hall, it had been sold off early in the last century, along with most of the estate, after the house burned down, and now what was left of the grounds, mostly woodland and rampant shrubbery, had gone wild.
Eli’s smallholding was the closest neighbour in one direction, and the farm up the long track at the further end of the narrow lane that ran past the cottage, in the other.
Eli said if the grounds of the Hall hadn’t been so overgrown, or the wrought-iron gates to both entrances not only rusted solid but padlocked, I could have walked across to the
The Christmas Retreat
village of Mossing in about twenty minutes, since it cut off a great loop of road. I could still get into the grounds, however, because there was a gate at the end of my garden, beyond the fruit garden behind my tiny lawn and rose beds.
It was like having my own Secret Garden – or secret Wild Wood. It provided endless inspiration for my Hedgehoppers book series and a playground for Mrs Snowboots, until the last few months, when age had finally slowed her down and she preferred to doze comfortably inside.
Wisteria Cottage had been in need of considerable renovation when I found it, but, thanks to Evie having invested the money from the sale of Granny’s Cornish cottage for me when she’d died some years back (I barely remembered her tall, austere and disapproving presence, although most of the disapproval was for Evie – they had never got on because my mother was too much of a free spirit), I could afford to buy it outright and get the main structural work done to it before I moved in.
Evie hadn’t even told me about the money until I’d finally finished my graphic design course and Will and I had broken up for the first time, and I suspect the latter fact had a lot to do with it, because she never liked him.
Will and I had met as students on the same course, but he had left early to set up a computer game business with his friend Simon, which wasn’t a total surprise because his interests had moved increasingly in that direction, while mine had focused on illustrating – and later writing. Computer game graphic design was a world away from the Chinese brush painting and Japanese woodcuts that inspired me to develop my own style of minimal line and bold washes of colour.
Evie had refused point-blank to put any money into Will
and Simon’s business when I asked her, and I’m sure she kept back the information that she had that nest egg squirrelled away for me in case I gave it to Will instead of buying a property of my own with it.
Evie assumed I’d buy a little flat somewhere in London, but without Will there was nothing to keep me there. I’d always secretly longed to live in the country, despite most of what I knew of it having been culled from Liv’s collection of very old children’s novels, where the adults were always off stage and the children had wonderful adventures. At last I could have one of my own!
I’d bought the cottage even though Evie and Liv had done their utmost to dissuade me.
‘You don’t know anything about the country,’ Liv had pointed out practically. ‘You may well hate it.’
‘I’ve read a lot about it and I think I’ll love it,’ I’d said stubbornly.
‘You’re too young to hide yourself away in the middle of nowhere,’ Evie’d objected. ‘You can’t become a recluse at twenty-five.’
‘I can if I want to! Anyway, I won’t be a recluse, because friends will come and visit, and I hope you and Liv will, too.’
‘Not to stay – the countryside gives me hives. I thrive on exhaust fumes and London dust,’ Evie declared. ‘What would I do in the country? And it isn’t Liv’s thing either, even if I could spare her.’
She might have added that she found her life too interesting and absorbing to waste it in what was to her an alien and boring environment, and she never wasted time on things that bored her.
Liv’s idea of a holiday was an upmarket coach tour of stately homes and museums in the UK or abroad, so I knew Evie was right about that, too.
‘I can’t imagine what you’ll find to do down there, once
you’ve finished doing the cottage up like an oversized doll’s house. I mean, it’s a cultural desert,’ Evie had added, baffled.
‘But it will be the perfect environment for writing and illustrating my books. I’ve already got an idea for a new series, set in the country, and for slightly older readers.’
I’d been so lucky that the picture book I’d written and illustrated as a final piece for my graphic design degree had been accepted by the first publisher I’d sent it to, with a contract for three more. Mrs Snowboots Saves Christmas had been a surprise bestseller.
‘There is that,’ Liv had conceded. ‘From a child you were always in a world of your own, scribbling your little stories and drawing the characters, with no idea of time passing.’
I got my way in the end. Evie said that at least it got that damned cat out of the flat – I’d adopted Mrs Snowboots in the teeth of her objections – and that although she thought I’d soon get tired of living in the middle of nowhere, playing at being a country girl, like Marie Antoinette with her Petit Trianon, once the cottage was renovated it would hugely increase its value and I could then sell it at a profit and move back to civilization.
Even she had had to admit that the cottage was fairy-tale pretty. White-painted and wisteria-clad, it had a thatched roof that lifted like surprised eyebrows over the upper windows, and a front garden with crazy paving and lilac and azalea bushes.
Perhaps the old wooden garage next to it was not so picturesque, but it was almost entirely covered by a flowering plant that I later discovered to be called, appropriately, Mile a Minute, since it seemed determined to take over the world and I continually had to hack it back.
Trisha
For the rest, there was a small patch of lawn and rose bushes at the back, with an arch in a trellis fence that led to fruiting trees and bushes, including the huge old plum tree, and the gate into the Hall grounds. It was perfect.
Liv, ever practical, had investigated the Hall and found there were no plans to develop the grounds. I couldn’t imagine there would ever be much interest in such an out-of-the-way and neglected spot. It turned out I was wrong, although not about how much I would love living in the country.
I’d moved in as soon as the major work on the cottage was done: a lean-to kitchen removed and a new one created, with a small studio next to it and an upstairs bathroom. Most of the rest I did myself.
And then, a couple of years later, just as I had got it the way I wanted it, Will had come looking for me and, stupidly, I’d fallen for him all over again.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t tried to find someone new in the years between – I had, but I think I must be super picky because, apart from a brief encounter with Rhys Tarn years ago when I’d met him at that publisher’s party, I hadn’t got any further than looking at the dating websites where, like internet shopping, you just knew what you’d get would bear little resemblance to what you’d seen on the screen.
My new relationship with Will had nearly come unstuck right from the start, and in retrospect I wish it had. He wanted me to sell up so we could buy a property together in London, near Simon’s house, where they created their computer games, but there was absolutely no way I was going to do that.
You’d think you could design the graphics for games anywhere, but he said he and Simon needed to bounce ideas off each other, and also that my broadband was way too slow.
It was fast enough for me. I preferred to do my illustrations the old-fashioned way, on paper with line and wash, then post them off to the publisher, although of course I emailed them the text.
In the end we compromised, with Will spending Friday evening to early Monday at the cottage and the rest of the week in London, where he rented Simon’s spare room. As time passed, however, he more often went back there on Sunday afternoon, so he spent more time with Simon than he did with me.
But it seemed to work out. I liked my solitude to work and do country things during the week, then have his company at weekends, even if the furthest we ever got was only a pub lunch in a nearby village and Will spent most of the rest of his time on his phone or watching box sets. The anachronistic Sky dish was only installed because he insisted: the things you do for love.
I thought we were happy until the Great Plague began to raise its ugly and menacing head and it became more imperative to work from home, when you could . . .
Then, finally, came the threat of lockdown and I knew Will would have to move to the cottage very soon and work from there for the duration, at least.
I was sure he’d have preferred to stay in London, except that Simon’s fiancée had moved in with him and didn’t seem that keen on having Will there twenty-four seven.
It was all getting a bit last minute until the road accident happened and then Will told me he was leaving me.
After that, although there might be no Adam in Eden, this Eve did just fine on her own.
But now, it seemed, things were about to change. *
The phone rang and when I picked it up, Evie’s crisp, clear voice demanded, without preamble: ‘What’s all this about the land behind your house being sold and the new owners wanting to buy Wisteria Cottage? Surely you must have known about the sale? I mean, planning permission to build a large new house on the estate wouldn’t have been passed in five minutes!’
‘I only had the solicitor’s letter with the offer yesterday,’ I said, which is when I had emailed Liv about it.
‘Yes, but you must have had some idea of what was happening, unless your head was completely buried in the sand – or the plums, or whatever else you were turning into jam or wine at the time,’ she insisted.
‘I’ve been too taken up the last few weeks with Mrs Snowboots; she seemed to fade away so fast . . .’
‘Well, I’m sorry about the cat,’ Evie said. ‘But she was old, so it can’t have been entirely unexpected. But all this about the Brocklebank estate must have been going on long before you got distracted by the cat.’
‘Yes, that’s true. Once I got the letter and began to look back, I can see I missed all the warning signs. It must have been eighteen months ago when Eli mentioned the estate had been sold, but then nothing happened and I forgot about it. I mean, people buy land just as an investment and then do nothing with it, don’t they?’
‘No idea,’ she said shortly, ‘but if it was me, I’d have been concerned.’
‘The postwoman said the land had been bought by a pop star or film star, or some other big celebrity, who would build a new home on it, but she delivers gossip with the mail, so I didn’t take that seriously.’
‘Well, it looks like you should have, doesn’t it? After your
email, Liv chased up the planning application and they’ve passed the plans for a big modern house complex, with staff quarters. No idea who the buyer is, though.’
‘It was a bolt from the blue,’ I admitted. ‘And I can see everything is going to change, but I suppose they will build on the far side of the estate, near Mossing, and lots of the old trees in the woodland must have preservation orders on them, so they can’t chop everything down,’ I said hopefully.
‘I don’t think I’d bank on it, Ginny. What did the solicitor’s letter actually say, other than offering you a good price for the cottage?’
‘Oh, that their client had bought the estate and was planning to build there, and would like to purchase my cottage, too, because they intended installing security staff at the entrance to both drives. They have already purchased the big lodge at the front of the house.’
‘Then I think you are about to be prised off your rock, darling,’ Evie said.
‘There was an email address on the letter and I sent a message straight back, saying I wasn’t selling,’ I said quickly. ‘And then they answered that one by saying that he – the solicitor – would like to come to see me and talk it over.’
‘Good strategy to turn them down first time round. I think they’ll pay you a staggeringly big price for it, if you play it right, Ginny. And you will have to sell because it sounds like they’re going to make it untenable for you to stay there.’
Just then there was a screaming metal sound outside that reminded me horribly of that road accident – and I was still having nightmares and flashbacks about that two years on. Holding the phone, I went out into the front garden and peered over the rustic fence. A large flatbed truck had pulled
up outside and the first of the rusted wrought-iron gates had been wrenched from its hinges and was already being loaded on to it.
‘What’s that horrible noise?’ asked Evie.
‘I think the barbarians are already at the gates,’ I told her, with a sick feeling in my stomach.
I am nothing if not stubborn so I stuck it out as November moved into December and winter set in. The price they offered went up and up, but so too did veiled threats that, finally, led to action, as the ground began to be cleared ready for building and the drives and woodland reclaimed from the wilderness I loved.
The straw that broke me was discovering that most of my rear garden – everything beyond the trellis fence – actually still belonged to the estate, and a bulldozer made short work of it. The only survivor was the huge old plum tree. Then came the information that if I would not sell, then the six-foot security fence that would run around the inner side of the estate wall would extend right around my cottage and garden, so I could envisage the tiny patch left at the back of the cottage would be more like a gorilla pit.
I didn’t want to leave, but the things I didn’t want to leave were mostly already wrenched away from me. I accepted their last offer on the understanding that they didn’t hassle me until I’d moved out, and told them I’d leave at the start of February, which would give me one last Christmas in the cottage and time to decide where I was going to go next.
Painted In
During my last phone call with Evie, I had been so taken up with my own grief over losing Mrs Snowboots and the sudden realization that my life at Wisteria Cottage was coming to a close that I had forgotten to ask her how her current research was going for the latest in her Painted Back In series of books about the lives and work of largely forgotten female artists.
She had decided to research the mysterious woman her mother had always referred to as Aunt Milly, although in fact she was no relation at all.
As a child, Evie had for a few years received birthday and Christmas gifts from this unknown person, but it was only when she reached her teens that my grandmother had told her who she was.
Granny, Frances Madoc, had been the illegitimate child of an artist’s model, who had lived in Cornwall with Milly Vane, an artist known for her woodcut prints. Arwen Madoc, my great-grandmother, had died soon after the birth in 1920, leaving the child to be raised by Milly.
Since Milly’s elder brother, Edwin, had made himself
responsible for paying my grandmother’s school fees, Frances was convinced that he was her father, but had refused to marry her mother when she fell pregnant.
Milly herself had not confirmed this – and in fact, according to my grandmother, had not wanted to talk about Frances’s mother – except to say that she had been the love of her life. This did not appear to have stopped her installing a series of other female lovers at her Cornish home while Frances was growing up.
Frances seemed to have reacted to the shame of having been born illegitimate and the scandal of Milly’s bohemian existence by becoming as prim and proper as Milly was not. Then, as soon as she had completed her teacher training, she became estranged from her and never saw her again.
Milly, however, must have kept track of her since she had known about Evie and sent her those gifts at Christmas and birthdays. And odd, fun things they had been, Evie told me, like the silk kimono embroidered with cranes and lotus blossom, and the Moroccan leather slippers with curled-up toes . . .
Evie had deduced most of what she knew about Milly from the little her mother had let drop on the subject, because by the time she was old enough to try to track down Milly Vane herself, she found she had died of MS in a residential home for artists and actors several years before.
So, when I next rang the flat and Liv had finally ceased trying to persuade me to spend Christmas there with her and Evie – not an attractive prospect, since Evie didn’t really celebrate it, always referring to it as an excuse for gluttony, self-indulgence and mindless consumer spending – and passed the phone across to Evie, I asked her: ‘How are you getting on with your life of Milly Vane? Was your trip to Cornwall useful?’
‘Yes, it was, very. Milly moved to Lamorna in summer 1919 with her brother, Edwin, also an artist, although he seems to have soon headed back to London. I found some interesting leads to follow up. A lot of artists moved to that part of Cornwall around then, and there are bound to be references out there to be dug up,’ she said. ‘Milly’s woodcuts were well regarded and I hope to see some samples in private collections. She also illustrated several books, so I’ve got Liv trying to track down copies of those.’
‘It sounds promising,’ I said. ‘And you were hoping to contact one of Milly’s descendants too, weren’t you?’
‘I already have: a great-niece, Charlotte Vane, still living in the family home in St John’s Wood, where her grandfather, who was Milly’s elder brother, Edwin, lived. We’ve exchanged emails and spoken on the phone a couple of times, but she’s a hospital consultant, with a husband and three children, which makes her a bit too distracted to concentrate on the matter in hand.’
‘I can imagine, but I expect her priorities are different from yours, Evie!’ I said, wondering what this unknown woman was like, who might or might not be a distant relative, if Edwin really had been Granny’s father.
‘Of course,’ Evie continued, ‘when I explained I was the daughter of Frances Madoc, she knew exactly who I was, and that my mother had been brought up by Milly Vane. Her father had told her all about it. But she had had no idea that Evie Chase the art historian was Frances’s daughter. It was quite a surprise to her.’
Evie expected everyone to know who she was, and to be honest, most people did, although I expected the ones who had come off worst in a bruising verbal encounter wished they didn’t.
‘She’s pleased I’m writing a life of her great-aunt, because she thinks her work has been very underrated.’
‘Could she tell you any more about Milly?’
‘She did fill the picture in a little; quite literally, since she still has a lot of her work and copies of all the books she illustrated, which she will loan to me if I can’t get copies of them.’
‘Great! It sounds as if you will be able to collect a lot more factual material for this biography than some of the others.’
I knew how hard it often was to trace women artists who, once they had ceased their studies, tended to vanish from history. This was mainly, it seemed, because they were denied access to the usual means of artists to sell and promote their work, including acceptance into the Royal Academy.
‘I simply can’t think why I didn’t research Milly earlier, when my mother was still alive,’ Evie said. ‘I might have managed to winkle a little more information out of her, about Milly’s friends among the other artists, for instance.’
I barely remembered the tall, austere figure of the grandmother I had seen on just a couple of occasions in early childhood. Just as Frances had rebelled against her own bohemian upbringing, Evie had rebelled against her strict upbringing by turning into a wild child and living a life almost as scandalous in Granny’s eyes as Milly’s had been.
I had appeared when Evie was in her late thirties, settled and successful, and although my upbringing might have been unusual, I knew Evie and Liv both loved me in their way and I had felt no need to rebel outright about anything . . . unless you counted the unheralded introduction of Mrs Snowboots into the London flat.
Evie was such a strong character that I’d always found it best
just to quietly and stubbornly get on with what I really wanted to do.
‘Charlotte told me more about her grandfather, Edwin Vane, who was a few years older than his sister, Milly, and became a respectable London-based artist and member of the Royal Academy,’ Evie continued. ‘But something Charlotte said in her last email was really interesting. She thinks Milly had met your great-grandmother Arwen Madoc when they were both studying at the Slade School of Art.’
‘You mean, Arwen wasn’t just an artist’s model, but an artist too?’
‘I’m going to check out the records and see if it’s true. It seems likely, because Charlotte has a couple of small oil seascapes signed by “A. Madoc”, which she thinks may have been painted by her.’
I could hear Evie restlessly drumming her fingers on some hard surface. ‘According to Charlotte, when Milly developed MS and moved into a home for artists and actors and her cottage was packed up, everything came to the London house except two boxes of Arwen Madoc’s personal belongings, which she instructed were to be sent to my mother. But,’ she added, ‘Milly kept what she always called her “Memory Box”, full of letters and photographs.’
‘Which could be a valuable resource?’ I suggested. I was finding this all really fascinating and a welcome distraction from everything else going on in my life.
‘Of course. What’s more, Charlotte thinks it is still in the attics somewhere, only so far she hasn’t had time to go and search for it.’
I could feel Evie’s impatience over the phone and knew she
would have loved to have gone and ferreted out the information herself!
I was proved right, for she now added regretfully, ‘I offered to go and search for them myself but Charlotte said she would prefer to do it.’
‘Frustrating,’ I commiserated.
‘I’ll keep chivvying her till she gets on with it,’ she said determinedly.
I was sure she would, but I thought a busy hospital consultant with three small children, the flu season upon us and Christmas popping up on the horizon would have other priorities.
‘It’s intriguing that my great-grandmother might have been an artist,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you will end up writing her life, too.’
‘It’s likely to be a short one, if so, since she died so young, but I’m certainly going to track down as much information about her as I can. I want to see those two paintings Charlotte thought were hers, for a start, and she said if I popped round one weekday morning, the au pair would show them to me.’
That sounded as if a somewhat harassed Charlotte had thrown her a sop to keep her off her back! But Evie now had lots of leads to follow up, not just for Milly Vane, but also the tantalizing prospect of excavating the life and work of her own grandmother from the past, and then polishing her new-found treasure, like a jewel, until it shone in its rightful setting. *
By the end of the first week of December a kind of seasonal delirium had usually overtaken me, but that year I was just
going through the motions out of a stubborn determination to have one more Christmas at the cottage.
I adored Christmas and all the traditions. I think I was trying to make up for the austere ones of my childhood, when Liv supplied a modicum of traditional celebration by taking me, in the teeth of Evie’s objections, to see Santa at a large store, and to the pantomime.
There was also always a stocking on Christmas morning. That was something I used to do for Will every year, too, once we’d got back together after our first split. He never thought of doing the same for me.
This year, although my heart simply wasn’t in it, I made and iced my Christmas cake and filled the small freezer with mince pies.
I unpacked and set up a little glass Christmas tree, but I somehow couldn’t bring myself to get out the artificial half-tree, which usually hung on the wall, well out of Mrs Snowboots’ reach. My collection of vintage glass baubles, the fruit of eBay and Etsy searches, stayed packed in their holly-printed storage box.
As I put up the paper garlands, I played carols to try to drown out the sounds of mayhem and carnage being wreaked on the estate all around me.
There were only a few Christmas cards on the mantelpiece, because Evie’s habit of moving me from school to school, as her ideas on education changed, had not led to the forging of deep friendships. Then, when I went to college, I met Will on the first day and we were totally wrapped up in each other . . . until he grew to love computer games more.
I’d slowly lost touch with what friends I’d had, as they married or moved on with their lives and careers, and I’d never
fallen for the lure of social media. I liked living my real life, in real time, not one seen through a lens or a virtual one, which was the total opposite of Will. When I think of the Web, I see it literally as a huge cobweb, people stuck to it like flies while they are mined for information that will lure ever more of them into it.
Since Evie’s initial call telling me about her research into Milly Vane and, now, Arwen Madoc too, I had received the welcome distraction of several texts and emails from her, as she pursued two intertwined trails.
She told me that Arwen Madoc had studied at the Slade School of Art, between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, until she left in 1919. Milly had been a couple of years older and, in the early summer of 1919, moved to Cornwall with her brother, Edwin, where she lived for the rest of her life until she developed MS.
‘Once I knew when Arwen was at the Slade I had Liv track down her birth certificate,’ she told me. ‘It revealed that her father was the London-based Welsh artist Lewis Madoc.’
‘So we have Welsh connections way back?’ I said, interested. ‘I suppose Arwen is a Welsh name, after all, so that figures.’
‘Yes, it’s a version of Anwen,’ she agreed. ‘So then Liv got hold of the death certificates for Arwen’s parents, who both died of the Spanish flu early in 1919, and of Arwen herself, who died in Cornwall in late March 1920, from complications of childbirth.’
‘She must have been very young!’ I said, compassionately.
‘Nineteen. We have my mother’s birth certificate too – no father on there.’
‘I see . . .’ I said, working things out. ‘So after her parents died, Arwen left the Slade and moved to Cornwall with Milly and her brother.’
‘It seems probable, unless I find evidence to the contrary.’
‘Since we now know the story Granny told you about Arwen being an artist’s model wasn’t true, I wonder if the rest of it was. Was Edwin the father of her child – and if so, why did he abandon her and move back to London, choosing respectability, as Charlotte Vane told you he did?’ I said.
‘I suspect I’ll need to see the contents of Milly’s Memory Box before I know any answers to that. According to Charlotte it was full of photographs and letters. She’s sure it is in the attic somewhere.’
‘That reminds me, Evie,’ I said. ‘Charlotte told you Milly sent two trunks of Arwen’s personal belongings to Granny when she had to move into the residential home. I wonder what happened to those.’
‘Two minds with but a single thought,’ said Evie sardonically. ‘That occurred to me, too. When Mother died, Liv packed up her cottage for me, because I had to fly back to the States right after the funeral to complete my lecture tour. She had anything that looked valuable, or that needed sorting out at more leisure, sent here to the flat. Among them were two locked trunks with the keys missing. She’s sure they will be in the basement lumber room somewhere.’
‘Great – they could contain all kinds of useful things! But I don’t understand why you aren’t down there right this minute, digging like a terrier after a bone?’
‘Because as soon as I realized they were there I did dash down that damned spiral staircase and fell down the last few steps, badly wrenching my ankle.’
‘That sounds painful. At least you didn’t break it.’
‘There is that,’ she admitted. ‘I sent Liv down to see if she could spot them. She thinks she can see them right at the back,
but it’s more packed in there than Tutankhamen’s tomb, so she can’t get at them.’
She sounded frustrated, unsurprisingly.
‘Liv says she’s not going to start heaving heavy furniture and trunks about at her time of life, so it’s stalemate at the moment. I need them up here now anyway, so I’m going to have to lure two strong young men in to fetch them.’
‘Anyone in particular or you going to lay some kind of trail up to the flat from the street?’
‘No need. I think the two Polish builders gutting the house next door will be open to a hefty bribe. Liv is softening them up with her cherry and dark chocolate brownies.’
‘Well, let me know when you get them and if there’s anything interesting in there.’
‘Of course,’ she said. Then, changing the subject: ‘Liv says you haven’t found anywhere else to live yet, Ginny. Aren’t you leaving it a bit late?’
‘I am looking,’ I said, although I hadn’t really got down to it. ‘But I’ve been occupied with an idea I had for a new writing project. When I was looking around the studio, I saw the shelf with all my sketchbooks, each dated like a diary, in which I’ve drawn, written and painted my everyday happenings at Wisteria Cottage for each year that I’ve been here. They’ve got all kinds of things pushed between the pages, like recipes, photos and craft notes, and I thought I could add loads more photos, recipes, craft notes and even gardening information, so wherever I move to next, I will be able to come back into this world. Perhaps later I might turn them into a series of small nonfiction books about life in the country.’
‘Good idea,’ Evie enthused. ‘That kind of thing always sells to people who want to live a country life vicariously, without
The Christmas
losing any of their city comforts, and your illustrations will make them really special.’
‘I’m going to run the idea past my agent,’ I told her. ‘Sorting the material will give me a project to do until I’ve moved on and can settle to write the next children’s book.’
‘As long as it isn’t just an excuse to wallow in the past,’ Evie said bluntly, and then rang off before I could indignantly refute this idea.
Of course, as usual, she had hit the nail right on the head.
But while it would be a nostalgia trip, it would also be a celebration of the ten mostly happy years spent at Wisteria Cottage with Mrs Snowboots.
‘I’ve been to see those two oil seascapes at Charlotte Vane’s house,’ Evie said without preamble when I picked up my phone early one morning. She did tend to ring at odd hours in order to use me as a sounding board for ideas, if Liv wasn’t around.
A flake of plaster, dislodged by the vibrations of a passing lorry, floated down from the ceiling. I fished it out of my coffee cup.
‘You know, the ones signed “A. Madoc”. They’re well painted in a semi-abstract style, very luminous and atmospheric. I don’t think that came across in the photos I just sent you.’
‘I’ll have a look in a minute,’ I said.
‘I took them down from the wall so I could have a good look and discovered that they were both Cornish scenes, painted in September of 1919.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because she’d not only written the date and location on the back stretcher, but also the time of day and the weather conditions, too.’
‘So if the paintings are by Arwen, then that definitely places her in Cornwall by that time.’
‘It does. But I’m sure I’ve seen something similar to these paintings before, I just can’t remember where or when. The style is very loosely painted – quite expressionist – and the colour luminous. She was a very accomplished artist for someone so young.’
‘I expect it will come back to you,’ I said.
‘I am sure it will. I’ve done an internet search for more of her work, but not turned anything up yet,’ Evie said, before adding: ‘What’s that horrible noise?’
I glanced out of the side window, which had once been a door on to the drive, before the cottage was sold off.
‘It’s a big cement mixer.’
‘I thought you didn’t get much traffic up your lane,’ she said, but abstractedly because her head was obviously full of her own concerns.
‘Things change,’ I told her, then noted on my shopping pad a possible title for the last in the ten-book series about the cottage I was planning: Change at Wisteria Cottage.
When she’d rung off, I sat there for a while longer. I didn’t much fancy the coffee now, which was still flecked with white specks of plaster, like dandruff.
It had quickly become clear that I’d made a terrible mistake when I’d exchanged contracts on the cottage before I was due to move out, because although I had the agreement in writing that that was not to be until 1 February, the new owners were starting to make my last weeks there almost untenable.
There seemed to be a one-way system on the estate, so that all the lorries and cement mixers arrived by the front drive of Brocklebank Hall and left by the back entrance, the constant rumbling noise of them shaking the old cottage.
Then, the weather having continued mild into December, the workmen who had been repairing and heightening the estate wall began digging a trench right across the front of my garden to take the footings so they could extend the wall across it.
It was only because I dashed out and harangued them and then threatened them with my solicitor that they put boards over the trench in front of the garage so that I could get my car in and out. Even so, the boards were so thin and bendy that I was scared to drive over them.
I suspected all this was intended to make my life so unbearable I’d move out early, but since I hadn’t yet got anywhere else to go and was still determined to spend Christmas at the cottage, I was digging in my heels.
Eli, when he brought my eggs and vegetables, said it looked as if I was under siege and I told him that is what it felt like.
Meanwhile, I invested in a pair of noise-cancelling headphones and carried on delving into the sketchbooks and thinking up titles for each year of my residence at Wisteria Cottage, losing myself in the past.
4
Trunk Call
After that, life at the cottage grew more difficult by the day, so that before we were even two weeks into December, I found myself confessing to Liv about what was happening and that I was only managing to work because I’d bought those noisecancelling headphones.
‘Don’t you think it’s time to call it a day?’ she suggested sensibly. ‘You can put everything in storage until you find a new home and move back to the flat.’
Evie must have been sitting nearby, for she took the phone and said: ‘That makes sense, Ginny, and there’s lots of research for the new book you could be helping us with.’
Then she cunningly added, knowing how interested I’d be in the prospect: ‘The workmen are finally bringing those trunks of Arwen’s things up from the basement tomorrow. They couldn’t do it before, because the owners of the next-door house have been around a lot lately, but now they’ve gone abroad till after the New Year. Aren’t you dying to see what’s in them?’
‘Of course! But I’m staying put till I absolutely have to leave,’ I insisted stubbornly.
