Page 14 of The Garden of Forgotten Wishes
Caspar sat up to watch as Myfy pulled on a pair of wellingtons without bothering with socks, shrugged into a long black woollen coat with brightly coloured tassels hanging from a pointed hood and led the way through Lavender Cottage.
She opened the door onto Elf’s ice-cream-making room a crack and prevented Caspar’s attempt to squeeze through with her foot.
‘No cats allowed in there. Same in the ice-cream parlour, though luckily he doesn’t seem to have thought of jumping up onto the stable door when the top’s open,’ she said, closing the door again. ‘Dogs are allowed on the patio, of course, if their owners are well behaved.’
She gave that tilted smile again and carried on along an inner hall, past the foot of a wide, polished wooden staircase and several closed doors, merely saying, ‘Small parlour … formal dining room – we tend to eat in the kitchen mostly – and here’s the living room.’
She did open the door this time, revealing a huge, airy room obviously created out of several smaller ones. There were wooden floors, over which lay faded, but beautiful, old carpets, and a log-burning stove on a stone slab hearth.
She didn’t pause, but clumped across the floor in her wellies and led the way into a studio that had been built out at the back and had French doors leading to the garden, pausing only to shut a very miffed Caspar in the living room.
‘He has to stay in at the moment, till we feel he knows it’s home and won’t wander off,’ she explained. ‘I do let him in here when I’m working, though.’
‘It’s a great studio space,’ I said, looking round.
‘It was Father’s – and now it’s mine,’ said Myfy, striding past a large, empty easel and stepping out of the French doors onto a small patio.
It was crazy paving, like the path that wandered off in a meandering fashion through huge hummocked beds of lavender and some rampant rosemary.
‘Elf manages the café and does most of the cooking, and I take on the gardening, when I have time from my painting,’ Myfy explained. ‘Mum loved lavender and so do I. I’ve got as many different varieties as I can cram in – Hidcote, Munstead, Miss Katherine …’ she murmured dreamily. ‘And the white varieties, Edelweiss, Nana Alba and Arctic Snow.’
‘I’m not so familiar with the white kinds and, of course, I’ve been looking after mainly French varieties, lately.’
‘Fathead,’ she said, still in the same dreamy tone, and I stared at her.
‘Not perhaps so hardy as the others, but pretty, so I’m trying it,’ she added, to my relief.
‘I see what you mean about the rosemary. It’s got way too big for its boots and gone woody.’
‘It certainly has, and it’ll be a tough job getting it out, I’m afraid. It was Elf’s idea to put some among the lavender, but I don’t think it’s working out.’
‘I’ll soon have it out and then you’ll be able to replace it with more lavender,’ I said cheerfully.
We were well down the garden now and I could see a trellis overburdened with thick, thorny stems. They reached out across the arch dividing the lavender garden from the rest, ready to snare the unwary.
‘The Rambling Rector, I assume?’
‘Got it in one,’ said Myfy. ‘I put it in to cover the trellis, but I hadn’t quite realized how fast growing andthornyit was. I expect I should have radically pruned it back every year.’
‘I’ll tame it,’ I promised. ‘It needs a good cut back now, while it’s still early in the year, then an eye keeping on it.’
Avoiding the grabbing, spiky stems of the Rambling Rector, I ducked through the arch and discovered beyond it a rectangle of paving, surrounded by a border of shrubs including several mahonia bushes. In the centre stood a neat row of three white beehives.
‘Who’s the beekeeper?’
‘Elf. She’s a member of the Thorstane Bee Group, though there’s not a lot to do with them at this time of year. Some die off, including the old queens, and the rest are either asleep or stay near the hive.’
‘I’m afraid I know nothing about beekeeping,’ I confessed.
‘Nor I. I like bees, but I haven’t time to mess about with them. I paint and garden and that’s it. And Jacob says he’s allergic to them, but I think that’s just cowardice.’
‘Jacob?’ I asked at the mention of a new name.
‘My husband. He lives in a converted barn up a track next to the Village Hut at the end of the Green. I mostly stay here in Lavender Cottage. We find it works better like that, with separate studio spaces.’
‘Oh?’ I said, interested by this revelation.Icertainly never wanted another husband, but if you had to have one, then keeping him in a separate house seemed like a good idea to me.
‘That door in the wall over there is our private entrance to the River Walk. I’ll show you that later because we’d better go straight to the Grace Garden now. I told my nephew I’d bring you over and introduce you after lunch and he’ll be wondering where we’ve got to.’
