The Chain Garden Read online

  She’s jealous, Grace realised. Settling her mother she hurried to the sideboard. ‘I told Patrick we would manage on our own.’ She picked up the ladle and removed the lid of the tureen. ‘It’s only for this meal, Granny. Tonight everything will be back to normal.’ Catching her mother’s eye she smiled. ‘No, it will be better than that. It will be wonderful.’

  Mentally blessing Rose who knew her grandmother’s preferences and had somehow found time to prepare chicken broth, fresh sweet rolls, slices of cheese and cherry tartlets, Grace was careful to serve her mother small portions. Given a full plate Louise invariably pushed it away untouched.

  Seated once more, she racked her brain for snippets of gossip picked up in the village. Absorbed in the conversation Louise ate enough to allay her daughter’s anxiety and Hester was distracted from voicing every complaint as it occurred to her.

  After an hour she could ill afford, Grace dropped her crumpled napkin beside her plate. ‘Will you excuse me?’

  ‘Where are you off to now?’ Hester demanded.

  ‘Not far, Granny. Just to the kitchen garden to fetch the vegetables.’

  ‘Why can’t one of the gardeners bring them up? That’s a job for the boy. No doubt he’s hidden himself away somewhere to avoid doing any work.’

  During the winter Grace had often seen Billy alone in the pot shed, shaking with cold, his blue hands barely able to hold the flowerpots he was washing in the icy water. She knew how seriously he took his job. But contradicting her grandmother would only invite trouble. As Louise pushed back her chair Grace went to help her.

  ‘They are really busy just now, Granny. There’s an awful lot of work for just the four of them.’

  ‘A place this size needs a proper staff to run it,’ Hester stated. ‘Where’s the money going? That’s what I’d like to know.’

  Louise sighed. ‘Mother, you know as well as I do it’s going to the mine. Though Henry says that’s only a temporary measure.’

  ‘He said that a year ago.’

  ‘True, but with the boys abroad and Zoe in London we haven’t really needed more indoor servants. As for the gardens, Henry didn’t dismiss the journeymen. He just didn’t replace them when they moved on.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Hester sniffed. ‘There’s no loyalty these days.’

  ‘Granny,’ Grace broke in. ‘Would you like me to call Violet for you?’

  ‘Good heavens, girl, whatever for? I’m perfectly able to cross the hall by myself.’

  Leaning on a silver-topped cane with Grace on her other side, Louise whispered, ‘It’s not easy for her, darling. Granny really misses Zoe. They were very close.’

  Grace’s memory threw up vivid images: Granny Hester cuddling Zoe, telling her how pretty she was, how gifted, how special. Tears of adoring pride trickling down Granny’s face in chapel while Zoe sang her solos. Zoe brought downstairs to sing for guests.

  Grace recalled standing at the side of the room as they listened, their eyes wide with amazement. When Zoe curtsied she saw them turn to each other as they clapped, saying what a remarkable voice it was, and how like an angel Zoe looked with her golden hair and sapphire eyes.

  Told to make herself useful while Zoe was admired, Grace carried cups of tea and offered plates of sandwiches or cake to the guests. Smiling, always smiling, in case they thanked her. Occasionally someone would notice her and smile back. When they asked Aren’t you proud of your little sister? She said yes, because she was.

  Now Zoe was in London fulfilling her dream. Now her audiences weren’t just friends and family but a whole theatre full of strangers who also adored her. Her infrequent letters were most often addressed to her grandmother who would read aloud from them but refused to let them out of her hands.

  Scribbled between rehearsals and performances or while she was dressing for yet another supper party, Zoe’s notes were as frothy as the lace on her lingerie. She wrote of her current play, her new gowns, and boasted of the titles of her most ardent admirers.

  ‘We’ve lived so quietly since the boys left.’ Her mother’s voice brought Grace back with a start. ‘You can understand Granny being nervous that Bryce and Richard’s return will change things.’

  ‘Mama, this is their home. Granny knew they weren’t going away forever. In any case, and I mean no disrespect, she spends so much time upstairs in her sitting room she might as well have remained at Trenarren.’

  ‘It’s not quite as simple as that, darling. After your grandfather died she didn’t want to stay there on her own.’ She paused. ‘Granny is a wealthy woman and your father needed money for the mine.’

  ‘Oh.’ Grace had always assumed it was her mother’s wish to have Granny live with them. But if it were not, if her presence were instead a business arrangement, that might explain the tension Grace sensed between the three of them. Her father’s attitude to his in-law was civil but had never been warm.

  ‘Off you go.’ She waved Grace away.

  ‘What will you do, Mama?’

  ‘It’s such a lovely afternoon I shall take a turn in my garden.’

  Chapter Two

  Carrying two shallow baskets laden with asparagus, new potatoes and a variety of fresh vegetables and salads, Grace entered the big kitchen. Maggie, the scullery maid, was standing at the deep stone sink up to her elbows in suds as she worked her way through a small mountain of used mixing bowls, pans and dishes.

  At one end of the huge scrubbed table two loaves, four fruit pies, two trays of sausage rolls and a Dundee cake were cooling. At the other end, Rose Trott, her sleeves rolled up, cap askew, scattered flour on the marble slab and tipped a large lump of pastry from a bowl. The once pristine white apron covering her long blue cotton dress was marked with fruit juice stains and smears of cake mixture where she had hurriedly wiped her hands.

  Grace gasped. ‘Rose, there’s enough here to feed an army.’

  Her plump face scarlet, Rose wiped her perspiring forehead with the back of her wrist leaving a trace of flour. She clicked her tongue. ‘I know they two. Make short work of this they will. ‘Specially after all that foreign food. You jest put the baskets down over there, my handsome.’ She nodded towards another table under the window.

  Grace did as she was told. The wide shelf normally stacked with baking dishes and mixing bowls stood almost empty and there were several gaps along the row of gleaming copper pans.

  Copper, Grace thought. Copper had built this house and almost destroyed it. Tin had made it live again. But what if? She blocked the thought. This was a time for rejoicing, not worry. The twins were coming home.

  ‘Jack will bring the melons and strawberries himself,’ she said. ‘He gave me his word you’ll have them by five.’

  ‘The dear of him. A weight off my mind that is. Mistress all right is she?’

  Grace held up crossed fingers. ‘So far. And Miss Prideaux should be here shortly.’

  ‘Good job too. Best if mistress have company. The last few hours is always the hardest when you’re waiting for something.’ Rose turned the pastry. ‘Master be back to greet them will he? He been working some hard lately.’

  They both knew what Rose really meant. Her father was rarely at home.

  ‘These are difficult times, Rose.’

  ‘Could be worse though. At least the mine’s still working and Tremorvah men still got jobs.’

  ‘True.’ But for how long? Grace pictured her father’s face: the permanent frown, his air of distraction. Pain darted beneath her breastbone and she pressed her fingers against it.

  ‘What’s up with you then, my bird?’

  ‘Nothing, Rose. Well, perhaps a touch of indigestion. It’s been a busy morning,’ she added wryly. ‘And – well, never mind.’

  ‘I daresay Mrs Chenoweth don’t like all the upheaval. She’s not one for change,’ Rose nodded sagely.

  ‘Mizz Trott,’ Maggie hissed. ‘You was s’posed to say about Becky.’

  ‘Dear life. I’d forget my head if it wasn’t screw
ed on.’ Straightening up, Rose blew sideways at a stray wisp of hair. ‘You know Becky Colling? Live down Miner’s Row? Ernie Treneer who live next door caught Maggie on her way up this morning. He says he haven’t seen Becky for days. She won’t come to her door. He’s worried about her.’

  Oh no. Not today. Grace glanced at the floor, heat prickling her skin with shame as she imagined the minister’s response to such an uncharitable thought.

  ‘What’s wrong? Has something happened to her?

  Rose’s mouth pursed. ‘Nobody knows. That’s the trouble. Ernie don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Waiting for me he was, Miss,’ the kitchen maid said over her shoulder. ‘Said I was to ask Mizz Trott to tell you. He said you’d know what to do.’

  ‘He’s sure Becky’s at home?’ Grace said. ‘I mean she hasn’t gone to stay with her sister or something?’

  ‘No, she’s there. He’ve heard her.’ Rose turned the pastry, the short sharp strokes of her rolling pin reflecting her irritation. ‘I dunno why he bother with her. She never got a good word for him.’

  Grace sighed. ‘I’d better go and see.’

  ‘What now?’ Rose was startled.

  ‘There’s nothing more I can do here for the moment.’ Grace thought for a moment. ‘If Becky hasn’t been out she probably won’t have any food in the house.’

  Rose’s eyes rolled. Wiping her hands on her apron she waddled around the table. ‘Hang on a minute,’ she sighed. ‘I’ll put a few bits together for you to take.’

  ‘Rose, you’re a gem,’ Grace smiled.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ Rose sniffed. ‘What I do know is you got too much to do without taking on more.’

  Privately Grace agreed. But Becky lived alone, no one had seen her, and Ernie was worried. How could she not go?

  Seated at the head of the table Henry Damerel gazed at the other four men seated two on either side. A sudden surge of anger set his heart pounding. He slapped both hands down on the reports and papers strewn over the table in front of him.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he roared. ‘We’ve faced depressions before. They happened in my father’s time as well. They’re nothing new. The mine survived then and it will now. Remember ‘94 when the price of tin went down? Remember how many mines closed? But we hung on and came through.’

  When the price of tin had begun climbing, just as he had said it would, the increase had given him the leverage he needed. He had been able to introduce machine drills powered by compressed air. The benefits were immediately apparent as the amount of unpayable ground extracted by each core of tutworkers doubled. The adventurers were delighted. For though the tributers still worked the stopes with hammer and boryer to extract the tin, the ore was reaching the main shaft much faster.

  But it hadn’t taken long for the true and terrible cost of machine-drilling dry holes had become clear.

  Henry caught himself. He couldn’t afford distractions. In any case, all underground work carried risks. He shuffled through the papers, extracted two, scanned them briefly then looked up.

  ‘I haven’t come this far to give up now. We’ll get through this slump just like we’ve got through the others. But we’ll have to cut costs.’ At these words all four men around the table shifted on their chairs. ‘I know,’ he said before anyone could speak. ‘We’re pared down to the bone already. So at the next setting day I shall take the mine off tribute.’ He brandished the papers. ‘These reports say the lode is good in both shafts. Putting the men on contract and paying them weekly wages will save a substantial amount of money.’

  The purser immediately began jotting figures and making calculations. The two mine captains exchanged a glance.

  ‘That isn’t right nor fair,’ Joe Gainey muttered. Both men had worked in the mine since childhood, starting underground when they were ten years old. Their first job had been to operate fans at the entrance to unventilated ends. Big and strong for his age, Joe had soon moved to rolling barrows of spoil in places where there was no tram-road. Before long both were working alongside their fathers, developing skill, judgement and a comprehensive knowledge of the lode.

  Their role as mine captains was to supervise the underground work and act as agents between the miners and the adventurers whose investment paid the men’s wages.

  ‘No, it isn’t fair,’ Henry agreed. He knew they hated what he was proposing, not least because it was they and not he who would have to break the news to the miners. But he also knew they would accept it. The alternative was closure.

  ‘What else can I do?’ he challenged. ‘If any of you have a better idea I’d like to hear it.’ He waited a moment but none of them would meet his eye. ‘Things are bad. But they will improve. They always have in the past. The price is bound to start climbing again. We just have to hold on.’

  Leaving the kitchen Grace went to find her mother. Designed in the Palladian style, a central block flanked by two wings, the house was built of mellow stone with granite quoins and lintels. Midway along the back of the house a wide recess, two storeys high, echoed the four-columned portico at the front. In the centre of this recess, with a long window on each side and three more above, was a black-painted door known to all as the garden entrance.

  A paved area outside the door led to a short flight of wide shallow steps. Opposite these, through an arched iron trellis foaming with pale pink clematis was a gravelled walk bordered by rhododendron bushes, their trumpet-like blooms scarlet, crimson and purple against dark green glossy leaves. Down the centre of the walk a series of linked circular beds displayed colourful blooms.

  This was the chain garden. It was her mother’s creation, begun shortly after her paternal grandparents died in the influenza epidemic and her father inherited the house and estate.

  When her health and strength permitted, Louise Damerel spent every spare moment in the chain garden. As a child Grace had helped her, digging holes for each new plant then helping firm earth around the roots. But as the years passed there was less and less time. Busy with schoolwork and then with running the house she had become a visitor rather than a participant.

  By then, after reading that book, she was seeing the chain garden through different eyes. What she saw she didn’t understand. But she couldn’t ask. Though her mother needed her, depended on her, they had never shared thoughts or confidences. In any case, Grace wasn’t sure she wanted the truth. Knowledge conferred additional responsibility and she hadn’t the strength to take on any more.

  She looked along the row of beds. There were nine links in the chain. This had always seemed strange until it occurred to her that perhaps one was for grandfather Chenoweth, her mother’s father. She had been only eight when he died. That had been a terrible year. A month after his death her sister Charlotte and brother Michael, who were three and two, had caught scarlet fever. They had both died. But they were still remembered.

  Earlier this year their beds had been dense cushions of snowdrops surrounded by crocuses that symbolised the joys of youth. According to the book, snowdrops signified hope. Yet the children were dead. But perhaps if you lost a child you had to hope that they were safe and happy, somewhere.

  Each link in the chain was neatly edged with box. All held vibrant colour. As children they had raced up and down the walk and played in the garden. The twins, their cousins Neil and Catherine Ainsley, Zoe and her: each of them so different in personality yet recognizably family.

  Now Neil was a doctor in London, Catherine secretary to an MP at Westminster, Zoe a star in musical theatre. The twins were coming home after three years on the other side of the world, and she – Grace didn’t want to think about her life. She needed to find her mother then get down to the village.

  At the far end of the chain garden stood a small folly. Built of the same mellow stone as the house it had two tall arched windows and a semi-circular one above the solid oak door. Bone-dry, with an open fireplace and carpet on the wooden floor, it was her mother’s refuge when the sun gr
ew too hot or the wind too keen.

  Furnished with two deep armchairs it also contained several shelves stacked with gardening books, and a short-legged table of polished oak planks big enough to hold a tea tray without the need to remove the large planting diaries. There were no curtains and the windows at the back commanded a panoramic view of the deer park, the valley and the wooded hills beyond.

  Opening the door, Grace saw her mother sitting in one of the armchairs. She was hatless, her head against the high back, one hand on her lap, the other resting on the arm as she gazed out of the window.

  Below the sloping park, oaks, sycamores and the occasional copper beech hid the road and the upper reaches of the river. Across the valley, partly screened by more trees, were the mine workings. The two engine houses with their tall chimneys and surrounding sprawl of wooden sheds stood on scarred earth tinged red as a wound by tine ore that turned the river to blood.

  Grace was relieved to see the jacket covering her mother’s high-necked lace-trimmed gown. Hip length with wide lapels, the dark blue silk-lined velvet had huge puff sleeves that narrowed from elbow to wrist. The fact that she had chosen this in preference to the elderly green tweed she usually wore if she planned to do a little gentle hoeing was a clear indication of her fragility.

  Louise glanced round and before Grace could speak, smiled, holding out her hand.

  ‘Won’t it be wonderful to have them back? What stories they will have to tell us. It doesn’t seem so long ago they were falling out of trees and bringing frogs to the kitchen to terrify Rose. We must have a party. I’m sure they’d enjoy that. What do you think?’

  Grace took her mother’s slender hand between her own. Anxiety flared at the hectic colour along her mother’s cheekbones. But long familiarity with signs of impending trouble reassured her that the brightness in the violet eyes had not escalated into fever. Yet.

  ‘It’s a lovely idea. Though perhaps we had better let them get settled first. It’s a long way from India. They’ll probably be tired after so much travelling, don’t you think?’ Grace dropped her gaze from the fading smile, the shadow of disappointment.