Page 43 of The Garden of Forgotten Wishes
Ned collected up the old metal markers and I followed him with my coffee back to the marble seat by the pond, which had now acquired a cat.
‘Hello, Caspar,’ I said.
‘Pfut!’ he replied, pulling a face at me that I couldn’t interpret, before going back to staring down at the moving shapes beneath the water.
‘I hope he doesn’t try to catch the fish,’ I said worriedly.
‘He doesn’t seem to be thinking that way, just mesmerized by themovement. We’ll have to see. If he does start trying to catch them I’ll have to put something over the pond, which would be a pity.’
I drained the last of the coffee and handed it back with thanks.
‘Gertie says she’s got a sandwich for your lunch, and to go over when you want it.’
‘She’s very kind, but I don’t want her to feel shehasto feed me lunch every day,’ I said. ‘I was going to go back to the flat for something.’
‘Gert feeds us all: you’ll just have to accept it, or you’ll hurt her feelings. I have a greaseproof paper bag sitting on my desk as we speak and there’s a plastic box with a buttered cherry scone and a slab of lardy cake, too.’
‘Just as well we’re burning off so many calories, if lardy cake is on the menu every day,’ I said.
‘You sometimes get a bit of carrot cake, or fruitcake, but that one’s a staple, because it’s her husband, Steve’s, favourite.’
‘Do they live nearby?’
‘Just up the road in the lodge at the gates of Risings. Steve was left it by Edwin Lordly-Grace, the father-in-law of Audrey, probably to spite her, because they never got on,’ Ned said. ‘Steve used to be their gardener, but he retired as soon as he got the lodge and Wayne is doing it now – or pretending to do it, unless Audrey’s gimlet eye is actually upon him.’
It was a great pity, I thought, that the first of my Vane relatives I’d come across should be the shifty and work-shy Wayne.
‘Steve’s taken on a couple of small part-time jobs. He opens the gate to the ruins every day and looks after the public toilet block in the car park there, too.’
‘I think I saw him the day I arrived, when I stopped for a few minutes in the car park. Treena told me there’s going to be an archaeological dig there after Easter, run by one of her friends.’
‘I heard about that. Jericho’s End is such a small place, anything is big news! The site has never been dug before, but I can’t imagine it being very interesting, because the monastery was abandoned only a couple of years after it was founded. Elf says the river flooded the water meadowsright up to it for two years running and so the monks moved on and joined a more established priory somewhere else. I don’t know how she knows that, though – perhaps they took their records with them?’
‘Oh, well, archaeologists seem happy with very little, don’t they?’ I said.
‘Steve looks after the Village Hut, too, and he’s a leading light in the Christmas panto every year,’ Ned said. ‘That’s organized by the Friends of Jericho’s End, and I bet they try to ropeyouinto it.’
‘I shouldn’t think so. I’ve only been here five minutes,’ I said. ‘Did you mention Steve might be helping with the tickets when you open?’
‘I hope so. He’s coming over to talk about it later. He’s older than Gert and doesn’t want to work in the garden, but he’d be happy to help out with the tickets and the shop, if he can fit it round his other jobs. James will need a break, and though Gertie could fill in, I need all the gardening help I can get.’
‘It sounds like a good idea to me,’ I said, getting up and dislodging Caspar, who had somehow managed to drape himself across my legs without my noticing it. I was now covered in marmalade cat hair.
‘I’ll carry on for a bit before I have lunch,’ I said. ‘I think there might be a marble statue, or something like that, at the far end of the path. I canjustmake out something white between the branches.’
‘Let’s have a look,’ he said, and when he had, agreed. ‘I think you’re right! Go carefully, won’t you. I’d better get back to what I was doing. I left Gert to it.’
He dragged off the full garden bags with him and I got on with my pruning, though he must have brought the empty ones back, because when I finally stopped, due to the howling wolves of hunger prowling round my stomach, they were heaped on the path behind me.
For such a big man, he moved very quietly.
Some time had passed and as I headed for my sandwich in the Potting Shed, I spotted Ned going into his office with James and another elderly man, whom I thought I recognized from the day I arrived and now knew to be Steve.
I found a note on the table in the shed that said, ‘Ham and mustard sandwiches in fridge and buttered scones: help yourself, we’ve had ours. Gert.’
I did, after scrubbing my hands in the chipped sink in the staff toilet, a grandiose name for an ancient Victorian loo that lurked behind a blue-painted door on the other side of the yard. The identical one next to it was for visitors, so I hoped there were some urgent plans being put into place for upgrading those facilities!
I fed the inner woman, who was very grateful for it, then rushed back to work, because that glimpsed glimmer of white at the end of the rose garden was tantalizing me. Unfortunately, Istillhadn’t got near enough to make out what it was before I had to put away my tools and dash off to do the River Walk again.
