trees came about. Perhaps because the dogs always sat here, half in and half out of the sun. He looks out towards the shrubbery for the blackbird with the freak white tail, and tosses a crust into the undergrowth. There is always a danger taming birds with a cat.
It is such a beautiful day and he has no headache. For once his mind is clear. This is the best bit of the day, just before the day begins in earnest. His private communion with the garden. For a few minutes he can pretend … Is it pretend? Or just looking back? Like old men do when they get ancient.
He can pretend that he has woken to find Martha already in the garden, checking her seeds in neat little trays in the old wooden greenhouse. He would walk across the grass with a cup of tea for her and she would look up as excited as a child and point out what each tray held and where in the garden they were going to be planted out.
She was so organised. From rubble and rampant weeds the garden evolved and grew steadily every year. She kept track of things in a little red exercise book, marking carefully where things failed or had been planted in the wrong place. She drew little diagrams for borders of colour and smell; made sure that in winter there were bright berries, shiny leaves and shrubs to look at.
Eventually, he had to employ someone to help her. At first she was reluctant – she was intensely possessive of her garden and her privacy – but Fred knew he must find someone who would not take over but who would understand the sort of garden she wanted to create.
They had two false starts and then Hattie suggested her nephew, a boy of sixteen. Neither Martha nor Fred knew anything about him, and that was just as well or Fred would never have employed him.
Hattie arrived one morning with a surly youth called Adam, who looked as if he had been frogmarched up the drive. Martha, pretending not to notice his scowl, sat him down in the kitchen, made him tea and gave him a huge slice of home-made cake. Then she took him into the garden, pointed out the things she hoped to do and asked for his advice on this and that. What did he think about a pond here? Did he think they could enlarge the terrace, so that it had steps coming down?
Fred, hovering nearby, saw Hattie’s anxious face at the kitchen window. The boy was monosyllabic. Fred wondered what on earth Hattie was palming them off with. He was about to leave to go back to medical school, and was anxious too, but he trusted Hattie.
He returned from London the following weekend to find Martha had a willing and able slave. The scowl had gone. The boy’s white face was beginning to tan and half a pond had been dug.
Adam and Martha worked together twice a week for ten years. They made a spectacular garden, through trial and error, both learning as they went along. The boy had a natural talent and when he was offered a job as under-gardener on an estate on the Helford, Martha made him take it. She never wanted to replace him.
Fred turns away from the bird table and takes a walk round the garden. The old wooden greenhouse fell down a long time ago and nature has reclaimed so much of the garden. There is no telling where the borders once were. Tulips and daffodils spring up everywhere through tufts of long grass and bluebells. The old pond lies choked in the corner, covered in green algae. The heavy Victorian statue of an angel Martha found in a junk shop still stands placidly facing the house, snails nestling in his arms in little clusters. Lichen grows on his face and body like an extra filigree robe.
Much later, Martha told him that Adam had been in constant trouble for his violent, uncontrollable temper. Hattie took him in when her sister washed her hands of him. All he had done at her house, apart from being bored and sullen, was read her gardening magazines. Adam told Martha that he had been beaten constantly by his father. If Hattie had not taken him in, he would have killed him.
Fred thought then how right it was that Martha and Adam had come together. This garden that they made out of nothing had for both of them begun as a replacement activity and became an obsession and an abiding passion.
He supposes he ought to go in. Must not hold Barnaby up. The one thing he did not want to happen has happened. He and Martha have become Barnaby’s burden. So unfair. His head begins to throb. Damn head. Difficult to think sometimes.
Is he sacrificing Barnaby for Martha? No. No. Can’t think like that. Useless. Barnaby would no more think of a home than he would.
He walks slowly across the grass back to the house and the ghost of Martha flits with him. He so much wants to remember the young woman full of life and joy, who could make an ordinary day special. The young woman who built a garden. The young woman who wept in the dark when the shadows came and reached out for him. The woman he held and made love to. Breathed in. Breathed new life into.
He looks up. An old woman is standing at the French windows in her nightgown, waving at him. He could be Fred. He could be the gardener. He could be anyone. Her beautiful face is vacant, contains nothing of their life together. This, Fred thinks, is the hardest thing I have ever had to bear.
The new carer, arriving that morning, makes something of an entrance. She has spiky dark hair, a nose ring, an ethnic sweater and flimsy skirt finished off with a tight leather belt and boots. When Barnaby has finished showing her around, briefed her on Martha and Fred’s routine and left the house in a rush, she makes coffee and takes it into the conservatory.
She stands looking down at Martha as the cup of coffee she holds for her grows cold. The old lady is crying silently and the girl examines her wonderful high cheekbones and sees the tears falling from Martha’s closed eyes. She is disturbed and touched by the smallness of the old lady and the isolation of her senility.
She bends to Martha. ‘What is it?’ she asks. ‘What’s the matter, Martha? Look, I’ve brought you a cup of coffee.’
Martha opens her eyes at the sound of her name. She is going to say, ‘I am Mrs Tremain to you,’ but when she sees the pretty girl whose anxious face is close to hers she is so pleased she smiles. ‘Hanna! Where have you sprung from? I haven’t seen you for ages!’
The girl places the cup of coffee in Martha’s hands. ‘My name is Kate. Is Hanna your daughter?’
Martha looks puzzled. ‘No, no, I don’t think so.’
‘I’m from the agency. I’m here to help look after you.’
‘You’re very pretty.’
The girl laughs. ‘So are you.’
Martha’s face lights up. ‘I used to be, darling.’
In that small face suddenly alight, in the ease of that casual endearment, Kate is captivated. Fred lowers the Daily Telegraph he is not reading and smiles at her.
‘Hello, Kate. Welcome.’
‘Thank you, Dr Tremain. I’ll just go and get your coffee.’
She comes back and perches on a chair next to him. ‘The vicar suggested you might like a drive this afternoon. There is a little gallery at Newlyn? He said you both enjoy going there, and then walking or driving along the front past the harbour.’
Fred looks up at her. ‘That sounds absolutely wonderful. Martha would love it. How kind. Mrs Biddulph doesn’t drive, you know.’
Kate smiles. ‘So I understand. Are you both OK here, if I go and do a bit of tidying up?’
‘Of course. Of course. We are both fine. Enjoying the sun.’
Kate makes their beds and tidies the bathroom. She is intrigued by this strange house with its shabby sofas and beautiful furniture, by its fading elegance and enormous conservatory that throws sunlight everywhere. The whole house smells dusty, rather like a greenhouse, and there is this sense of waiting. Is it waiting, this stillness? Or is it a vague sense of sadness, of lives coming to an end? Kate is not sure.
The Loving Care Agency jumped at the chance of taking her on even though she assured them she would only be temporary, that she intended to move on. The pay is appalling, but Kate is used to working for peanuts. The only help she has accepted, from the aunt she was working for in London, is the cost of a few weeks in an hotel while she looks for somewhere to