Page 20 of The Garden of Forgotten Wishes
‘I’d love to go to look,’ I said. ‘Is that when the falls became known locally as the Angel Falls?’
‘That’s right. You can find it on very old maps. The child’s story was widely believed. At one time, there used to be an annual procession up here to bless the valley, but Elf thinks that might just have been a new spin on some kind of annual pagan fertility rite that has since died out.’
‘It’s all very fascinating,’ I said. ‘I did feel for a moment there wassomethingother-worldly up here … very odd.’
‘As children, we were often aware of a winged presence, or heard something, when we came up here, but whatever they are, I’ve come tobelieve that angels and fairies are one and the same thing. So did Mum – she saw them when she was a little girl, too.’
‘So most of the actual sightings have been by children?’
‘That’s right, though some continue to see them when they grow up. There’s an early Victorian story about a teenage girl who came up here with friends and vanished entirely, a bit likePicnic at Hanging Rock. But Elf never found any evidence for that, so she left it out of the book.’
‘Doyoustill see them – whatever they are?’ I asked curiously.
‘I know they’re here,’ she said ambiguously. ‘They inspired my paintings and I think they’re why the valley is such a healing place.’
‘What was the café-gallery called, before it was Ice Cream and Angels?’
‘Just Verdi’s. Joseph and Maria Verdi moved here from London in the late nineteenth century and began selling ice-cream and water ices. Mum was Gina Verdi, the last of this branch of the family.’
I took a last, long look round.
It wasn’t eerie, or threatening, it just felt as if there was another dimension close by, through the thinnest of invisible walls. Perhaps you needed the eyes of a child to see through that.
Mum had told me she’d once seen what she’d described as a cloud of small, glowing angels … I’d love to see those. Suddenly I really wanted to tell Myfy about Mum, but firmly quashed the impulse: it wouldn’t be a good idea to reveal the Vane connection when the family were so obviously disliked. Besides, I’d already had to divulge something from my past I’d rather have kept to myself, so this new life wasn’t proving to be quite the clean slate I’d hoped it would be.
‘Right, now we go up again,’ Myfy announced, heading away from the falls and up a rough-hewn flight of steps, which had another of the iron handrails, set into the rock and heavily painted against the damp air.
Eventually, we emerged onto a flattish area above the falls, with patches of bare rock showing through wiry grass. A drystone wall stopped the curious from plummeting over the edge, though it was more probably put there to protect sheep.
The path ended at a small turnstile set into a more substantial and taller wall and through it was a narrow, rutted farm track.
‘Isn’t this another Victorian turnstile, like the ones at the entrance? Did the early visitors come all the way up here?’
‘Quite a lot of them did, including many women – the long skirts didn’t seem to hinder them when they really wanted to do something. We won’t go through the turnstile now, because it’s one way only and we’d have to walk back down the road through the village. The track joins it near a small terrace of cottages called, appropriately, Angel Row.’
‘When I arrived in the café this morning there were some hikers who I think Charlie said were coming up this way and then on to Thorstane,’ I remembered. It was starting to feel like a very long time since I’d arrived!
‘Probably. They can pick up the back road to Thorstane just beyond Angel Row. Not that it’s much of a road, once you get out of the village,’ she added.
‘It did look tricky on the Ordnance Survey map. Zigzag and very steep.’
‘It is: hairpin bends, with deep ditches on one side and a drop on the other. It’s mainly used by farm and forestry vehicles – and hikers. It’s the shortest way to walk from Jericho’s End to Thorstane, if you have the stamina for it and it brings you out by St Gabriel’s, which is really our village church.’
‘Has there never been a church in Jericho’s End itself?’
‘I suppose the monks who tried to settle in the valley had some kind of chapel, but they moved on after only a couple of years. So no, not unless you count the Brethren, a strict religious sect who sometimes used to hold meetings in the Red Barn at Cross Ways Farm. They’ve now died out with the last generation, which is hardly surprising, since they seemed to combine a sort of Amish lack of comfort with a belief that salvation could only be gained by the extreme oppression of women.’
‘That doesn’t sound much fun,’ I said, though itdidsound like the kind of family Mum came from.
‘The Strange Brethren, they called themselves, and the Vane family from Cross Ways Farm were in the thick of it, hellfire and brimstone,women the original sinners and the cause of every evil,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘That kind of sect.’
The Vane family were sounding ever more unattractive and I felt no desire now to confess I was related to them. Wayne had hardly seemed a sterling modern-day example, either.
‘The St Gabriel’s parishioners, unless they were from the top end of the village, tended to take the footpath that starts near the gates of Risings and skirts the edge of Brow Farm. Bier Way, it’s called.’
‘Beer way?’ I echoed, puzzled. ‘It goes to a pub?’
She gave her tilted smile. ‘No,bier.’ She spelled it out. ‘It’s because coffins were often carried up it to the church.’
