Page 83 of The Garden of Forgotten Wishes
25
Relatively Speaking
The man who had walked into the rose garden with Wayne was not unhandsome, if you liked the elderly St John the Baptist look. As well as the head of a slightly mad prophet, he had a huge barrel of a torso and very short legs. He somehow reminded me of the Minotaur in the maze, possibly because there was something bullish about his stance as he drew closer and then stood, looking me over.
I took an involuntary step back, behind the frail barrier of the twisted rope.
‘Dunno why you wanted to see her, anyway, Dad,’ said Wayne, hovering at his elbow. ‘I know I said she looked kind of familiar, but foreign with it, so I’d have remembered her if I’d seen her before, wouldn’t I?’
‘You shut your mouth, boy,’ Saul Vane growled menacingly, like the teddy bear from hell. Wayne flinched, as if his father might actually smite him one, but Saul’s attention was now all on me and my throat went dry.
Could he possibly have even the faintest suspicion of my identity? But if not, why this interest in me?
I didn’t see how hecouldknow and, though I knew him to be Mum’s older brother, I felt no sense of connection between us, any more than I did with Wayne. They were an alien species and it was hard to accept that my vibrant, clever and lovely mother was related to them.
Not, of course, that I was expecting instant rapport, after the way they had disowned Mum.
‘What’s your name, lass?’ Saul barked at me.
‘I told you, Dad, it’s Marnie—’ began Wayne.
‘Shut it,’ his father said succinctly and Wayne backed away.
‘It’s Marianne Ellwood, and you must be Wayne’s father, Saul Vane,’ I said, facing up to him. ‘People have told me about you.’
‘What they been saying?’ he snapped out.
‘That you breed the best pigs in the county,’ I said.
He gave me another long, cold, searching look from grey-blue eyes that were the same colour as mine, though without the dark-ringed iris. ‘That I do – and built the organic pig side of the farm up from nowt to what it is today.’
‘Brilliant,’ I said, trying to infuse some enthusiasm into my voice, but thinking it was all getting a bit tooCold Comfort Farmand any moment now, he’d tell me he’d been scranleting his mangelwurzels, or something.
‘Yes,pigs,’ he said, with a depth of meaning I couldn’t understand. ‘You’d best bear that in mind, if you were thinking of coming calling.’
Wayne was looking as baffled as I felt – and Istillwasn’t sure if Saul was always like this, or really did have some suspicion about who I was, despite my being so dark and looking nothing like a Vane. He’d certainly had some reason for searching me out …
The crazy voice in my head chose this moment to start singing ‘There is nothing like a Vane’ to the tune of a song from an old musical.
‘Well, it’s been lovely chatting to you, but I must get back to work,’ I said, summoning a brisk smile and starting to turn away.
‘Not before you tell me, lass—’ Saul began, his hand reaching out as if he meant to grip my arm and keep me there, except by then I’d grabbed the wheelbarrow handles and was off.
I heard Wayne say timidly, ‘Best come away, Dad. There’s people looking at us,’ and I glanced over my shoulder, half-expecting Saul to have followed me, but he was still standing there, staring.
Then, in a low, carrying hiss that raised the hairs on the back of my neck, he said, ‘You stay away from me and mine, if you know what’s good for you.’
He stomped off, his son hurrying in his wake.
I escaped round the corner, out of sight of visitors, and sat on the marble bench in the temple, feeling shaky.
I went over everything he’d said and it seemed clear that something Wayne had told him had made him suspect who I was – but he couldn’t know forsure. That warning must have been to prevent me from attempting to claim any relationship to him, if he was right. Not that anyone in their right mind would want to, of course.
But then, suddenly, an alternative and almost as disagreeable explanation for the scene struck me: Wayne had obviously talked about me a lot, so what if his father thought he was romantically interested in me and I’d encouraged him, because I knew he was the son of a wealthy pig farmer?
That scenario would fit his warnings, just as well as the other did – or perhaps, I thought, hopefully, he carried on like that all the time, especially to foreign-looking interlopers?
But whichever it was, he’d warned me off, so that was presumably the end of it. I began to feel a little calmer, and after a while I unwrapped the sandwiches and got my flask of coffee out of my rucksack.
