On Sunday morning Marin headed over to the church while Rebecca remained at home, having a lie-in. A few people were walking down the lane towards the ancient building, its doors open to the weak February sunlight. Marin saw the Hattons walk over from the former vicarage, and she waved her hello.
Inside, the church was dim and smelled slightly of dust; electric heaters suspended from the rafters offered a paltry warmth, and Marin decided to keep her coat on. Most of the congregation were doing the same. She accepted a hymnal and service sheet from a smiling woman and slid into a pew at the back.
The last time she’d been in a church had been for the funerals of her father and his wife. She still recalled the overpowering scent of the gardenias and lilies that had made up the bouquets that covered both her father’s and Diana’s caskets. She’d had such a sense of unreality, standing at the back of the church, Rebecca pale-faced and silent by her side. Most of the people who had been coming through the doors had been strangers to both of them. Rebecca had had a scattering of friends and teachers; Marin had had no one. The rest of the mourners had been work colleagues and friends of her father and Diana; they’d smiled sadly and murmured condolences.
And then the service had started, the priest, another stranger, walking down the aisle as he spoke what Marin knew were meant to be words of comfort:
I am the Resurrection and I am the Life, says the Lord. Whoever has faith in Me shall have life, even though he die. And everyone who has life, and has committed himself to Me in faith, shall not die for ever.
The words had washed over Marin without any meaning. She and Rebecca had followed the vicar down the centre aisle, conscious of everyone’s circumspect stares, and then into the front pew. As the vicar had welcomed everyone to the service, his voice sombre, Rebecca had slid an ice-cold hand into Marin’s. They’d held hands for most of the service; it was, in some ways, the closest Marin had ever felt to her half-sister. At the funeral, they’d both been allowed to grieve.
Now the vicar, this Simon Truesdell Jane had mentioned, came to the front of the church and offered everyone a cheerful welcome. Then the organ started and the choir began to process; Marin got to her feet as everyone began to sing a hymn she vaguely recognized from the Christmas and Easter services she’d attended over the years, but didn’t know the words to. She opened her hymnal and began to sing too.
The church service was, in its own way, enjoyable; even though Marin had never been that much of a churchgoer, she found the litany of prayers and hymns to be soothing. For an hour she could simply be, without worrying about Rebecca or wondering just what she was doing in West Cumbria.
As the service ended, her mind drifted back to the garden, and the vicarage’s former occupants. Could the young woman in the photograph be related to the vicar named Sanderson? She thought of her intense stare, the wild rumple of her dark hair, the butterfly on her fingertips. She didn’t look like a vicar’s daughter, Marin thought, even as she bemusedly recognized that vicars’ daughters, like any other daughters, could look however they pleased.
“There you are,” someone said, and Marin blinked the world back into focus. Jane Hatton stood by her pew, a cup of tea in hand. The service had ended, and everyone was milling about in the back of the church, chatting over cups of tea and digestive biscuits. “Where’s Rebecca?”
“She fancied a lie-in,” Marin said and stood up. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think she’s very keen on church or God at the moment.”
“Well, it’s understandable,” Jane said with a smile of sympathy. “But I want to introduce you to Simon Truesdell.”
“He must be busy now—” Marin began as she eyed the man who stood by the door, wearing a suit and a clerical collar, smiling as he chatted to one of his parishioners. He looked to be in his early fifties, with curly grey hair and an open, pleasant face.
“He’ll want to meet you,” Jane insisted, and since there seemed to be little choice, Marin followed her to the door of the church. “Simon,” Jane said as she took hold of Marin’s arm. “I want you to meet my new neighbour, Marin—” She glanced back at Marin with a frown. “I don’t actually know your last name.”
“Ellis,” Marin said, and held out her hand to Simon. “Marin Ellis.”
“I’m pleased to meet you,” Simon said and shook her hand.
“Marin’s living here with her sister, Rebecca,” Jane continued and Marin braced herself for the inevitable how-did-that-come-about kind of question. But Simon, perhaps sensing her reticence, simply smiled. “She’s curious, like I was, about who lived in her house,” Jane continued, and Marin felt compelled to correct her.
“Not in the house, actually. I know who lived there: the former vicar’s mother-in-law originally, and various tenants since then. I’m more interested in the walled garden behind the house.”
“Ah, yes, the old herb garden.”
“Was it a herb garden?” Marin asked in interest, and Simon let out a little laugh.
“Over five hundred years ago, when the church was a monastery. Since the Reformation it’s surely had a different purpose.”
“There’s a photograph,” Marin began, “in the village hall. It’s of a young woman, with a butterfly resting on her fingertips. The caption says it was taken in the garden of Bower House.”
“Was it?” Simon raised his eyebrows, but Marin suspected his interest was merely polite. And why should it be anything else? Why should he care about an old photograph, or an overgrown garden?
“I was thinking,” Jane interjected, “that the young woman in the photo might be related to the vicar at the time – Sanderson, wasn’t it?”
“I believe so. I can have a look at the register, if you like.” He turned to Marin. “It seems this interest in the history of the place is catching,” he teased gently. “Is Jane infecting you with her enthusiasm?” He didn’t wait for an answer, which Marin couldn’t have given anyway, and simply continued, “I can look up the register this afternoon. I’d be happy to stop by Bower House and drop it off.”
“Oh, well, thank you,” Marin answered. She was surprised by the offer, but then Goswell was a small place. She supposed it wasn’t out of the ordinary for someone to offer to stop by.
After church she said goodbye to the Hattons and headed back to Bower House. The house looked forlorn and neglected, standing as it was amid the brambles and weeds. Never mind the walled garden, Marin thought; she needed to get the proper garden under control.
She let herself into the house and called for Rebecca. She came downstairs looking sleepy, still dressed in her pyjamas.
“You’re not even dressed?” Marin exclaimed with a little, uncertain laugh. “It’s nearly noon.”
Rebecca shrugged. “It’s freezing out, and I felt like lying around.”
“It is cold in here,” Marin agreed. “I still don’t think I’ve figured out the heating properly.” Something else she needed to sort out, and far more urgently than any garden. She went into the kitchen and opened the door to the Rayburn’s control, twiddling a few dials uselessly. “I thought I’d go into Whitehaven and get some supplies,” she told Rebecca over her shoulder. “For the garden.”
“What kind of supplies?” Rebecca asked. She didn’t, Marin thought, sound very interested.
“Well, I’m not quite sure, to tell you the truth. Some garden tools, I suppose, to manage what’s outside. I’ll need something to cut down the bramble – secateurs maybe…” Although she suspected cutting down swathes of bramble with a pair of garden shears would be an incredibly time-consuming proposition. “Would you like to come with me?” she asked. “There’s a home-and-garden store in the centre of town.”
Rebecca shook her head. “No, I think I’ll stay here.”
Marin suppressed a sigh of disappointment. Perhaps things would be better when Rebecca started school tomorrow, or perhaps she would just notice this awkwardness less. “Is there something else you’d like to do?” she tried after a moment. “I don’t have to go into town.”
“Do what you like,” Rebecca answered with a shrug. “I think I’ll watch TV.” And she disappeared into the lounge before Marin could answer.
She straightened up from where she’d been crouching by the Rayburn, glancing around the kitchen. Sunlight streamed through the window, making Marin notice the room’s emptiness; besides a few dishes in the sink and the modern chrome kettle on top of the range, the room looked unlived in. She thought of Jane’s cosy, cluttered kitchen, and decided she’d buy a few things for the kitchen as well as the garden.
Despite her worries about Rebecca, she spent a pleasant couple of hours browsing through the shop in Whitehaven; she picked up an old-fashioned brass kettle and a cork board and calendar for the kitchen wall, a set of mugs and a big blue teapot. In the garden section of the store she had an interesting time browsing wares she barely knew the use for: propagators and cold frames and cloches. She felt both intrigued and intimidated, because she didn’t know the first thing about any of it, and it reminded her of what a huge undertaking tackling the walled garden would be. But with Joss’s and maybe Rebecca’s help, perhaps they could at least clear a little bit of it.
She came away with a pair of shears, some heavy work gloves, and a paperback book called The Amateur Gardener. It was a start.
Back at Bower House she unpacked all her purchases as Rebecca sloped into the kitchen. Smiling, she brandished the kettle. “Look what I’ve got. Properly old-fashioned, this.”
“I suppose it is.”
“Cup of tea?” Marin asked and Rebecca just shrugged. Determinedly she washed it out and filled it, then placed it on top of the Rayburn. “Nobody ever says no to a cup of tea, do they?”
“I guess not,” Rebecca answered listlessly. She pulled out a chair and sat at the table, the sleeves of her jumper pulled down over her hands.
“Rebecca?” Marin probed gently. She knew how ineffectual her checking-up questions were, but she couldn’t help herself. She didn’t know what else to do. “Is everything all right?”
“It’s fine,” Rebecca said automatically, and then she sighed. “I’m just… I’m just nervous about school tomorrow.”
“Of course you are,” Marin agreed sympathetically. “First days are always tough.”
Rebecca glanced up at her, her eyes dark and wide. “Did you find them tough? When you went to school?”
Briefly Marin thought of her boarding-school days. “I found all of school to be tough,” she said, and then wished she hadn’t been quite so frank. She could hear the slightly bitter edge to her voice, the resentment and hurt that still had a deep and painful root after so many years.
“Why?” Rebecca asked. “Didn’t you like school? I mean, as much as anybody likes school?”
Now Marin was the one to shrug. “Not really.”
“But why?”
There wasn’t, she supposed, any real reason to prevaricate. “I went to boarding school when I was eight years old,” she said, her voice coming out a little flatter than she’d meant it to. “Right after my mother died.”
Rebecca’s gaze widened at that. “You did? But – I didn’t know that.”
“There’s no reason why you would,” Marin answered, trying to turn her voice light, as if none of this mattered any more. And really, it shouldn’t. She was talking about something that had happened nearly thirty years ago. “It was over a decade before you were born.”
“But you must have been so little,” Rebecca said, “to go to boarding school. Were you homesick?”
Amazingly, Marin felt a lump rise in her throat. Yes, it had been nearly thirty years ago, and she’d done her best to make peace with her father’s decisions, and yet… how quickly it could all come rushing back.
“Yes,” she said, and forced herself to swallow past that awful lump. She pictured herself at eight years old, hiding in the toilets, her face tear-streaked, her heart so heavy she’d felt as if she could barely move under its crippling weight. “Yes, I was quite homesick.”
“But did you come home, then?” Rebecca asked. “I mean…”
Marin shook her head. “It wasn’t like that.”
She turned back to her purchases, wanting, even needing, to stay cheerful. “I got a calendar for the wall. Scenes of Cumbria. They’re all photos of sunny days. You’d think Cumbria was the south of France.” She glanced back at Rebecca and saw that her sister was frowning as she stared at her hands, her fingers peeking out from under the frayed cuffs of her jumper.
“I didn’t know that,” she said slowly. “About you going to boarding school.”
“Does it matter?” Marin took out the calendar and hung it on an old nail on the wall. Not quite the cosy clutter of Jane Hatton’s kitchen, but it was getting there.
“I don’t know,” Rebecca said, looking up. Marin was startled by the bleakness in her young sister’s eyes. “I don’t suppose it does. But I just… I wish I’d known.”
Marin couldn’t think how to reply. She felt as if Rebecca had inferred something from what she’d said, something that changed things somehow, and yet she had no idea what it was. “Well, now you do,” she finally said, her voice as light as she could make it, and Rebecca nodded slowly.
A knock sounded on the door, the brass lion-shaped knocker that the estate agent had said was original to the house causing a hollow-sounding boom to echo through the building.
Rebecca raised her eyebrows. “Who do you think that is?”
“It might be the vicar,” Marin answered, smiling a bit at Rebecca’s double-take, and went to the door.
It was indeed Simon Truesdell, brandishing a slip of paper. “I’ve found the man you’re looking for,” he said cheerfully.
“Oh, thank you.” It had started to rain, big, icy drops; and so, awkwardly, Marin stepped to the side, ushering Simon in. “Would you like a cup of tea? I’ve just put the kettle on.”
“That would be lovely,” Simon said, and Marin showed him to the kitchen.
Rebecca, looking wary, stood up as he entered, and Simon stuck out a hand. “Simon Truesdell, resident vicar. You must be Rebecca. Jane Hatton told me about you,” he explained when Rebecca looked a bit taken aback. “You’re in the same year as Natalie.” Rebecca nodded, and the kettle began to whistle.
Marin made the tea while Simon chatted with Rebecca; despite her guarded, monosyllabic answers, he seemed at ease, and Marin wondered in bemusement if that was a requirement for vicars. Capable in any socially awkward situation.
“So here’s the man, or rather the family, you’re looking for, I think,” Simon said, and handed her a handwritten sheet. “I copied it out of the ledger. The church has got a list of vicars from the year dot – starting with the actual Cumbrians back in the 800s. Urien the Unholy, or what have you.”
“He doesn’t sound like a very good vicar,” Marin said with a smile.
“Well, I must confess I made that one up. But the ledger does make for some interesting reading. The bloke you want is Andrew Sanderson, vicar from 1897 to 1929.”
“He was here a good long time, then,” Marin said as she scanned the paper. Simon had written:
Andrew Sanderson, Vicar.
In his household:
Anne Sanderson, wife;
Walter Sanderson, son;
Katherine Sanderson, daughter;
Eleanor Sanderson, daughter.
One housemaid and a cook.
Rebecca had roused herself to look over Marin’s shoulder at the list. “One housemaid and a cook! Must be nice.”
“Ah, but that was positively modest,” Simon told her. “You should see the list a hundred years before then – four housemaids, a cook, a governess, a footman and a groom.”
“Where on earth did they all sleep?” Marin asked. “I know the vicarage is big…”
“The top floor is the old servants’ quarters. It hasn’t been touched in a century or more – you can still see the bells they used to ring to call the servants. Jane showed me.”
“So how many staff do you have?” Rebecca teased. Marin was glad to see her smiling and looking lively.
“Just me, myself, and I,” Simon informed her cheerfully. “But fortunately I just about manage to get the job done.” He nodded once more to the piece of paper Marin held. “So I hope that helps you.”
“I don’t know if it does or not,” Marin answered. “I don’t really know what I’m looking for.”
“The photograph?” Simon prompted, and she nodded ruefully.
“Yes, the photograph of the young woman taken in the garden. I suppose I would like to know who she is.” She almost said something about the nearly wild intensity of the girl’s stare, the unsettling way she’d looked right at the camera, but then decided against it. She didn’t think she could articulate, even in the privacy of her own thoughts, just what both fascinated and disturbed her about the girl.
Rebecca was peering over her shoulder once more, scanning the paper with the names. “Don’t you think it’s one of his daughters? Katherine or Eleanor? Look, their birthdates.” She pointed to the dates Simon had scrawled under each name. “1894 for Katherine, and 1899 for Eleanor. That would have made them twenty and twenty-six in 1920, when the photo was taken.”
“Circa 1920,” Marin reminded her. “No one is sure when exactly it was taken. It might have been a few years before or after.” She glanced back at the paper, and saw that Simon had written the dates of their deaths as well. “1918 for Walter,” she said quietly. “He must have died in the war.”
“Yes, I checked that,” Simon told her. “His name is on the war memorial on the bridge in the village.”
Marin had passed the war memorial on her way to the post office, but she’d never thought to look at the names. Somehow, seeing these names written down, remembering that young woman in the photograph, it mattered more. She decided she’d look for Walter’s name the next time she walked to the post office.
“Thank you for this, Simon,” she said. “It’s very helpful.”
“So are you going to do some more digging? Find out about these people, and the house?”
“The garden,” she reminded him. She liked the house with its funny little turret, but it was the garden that called to her. “Yes, I am going to do some digging. Literally. I want to clear the walled garden, and find out what’s there, if anything.”
“Well, do keep me informed,” Simon said, and finishing his tea, he rose from his chair. Marin saw him out and returned to the kitchen to find Rebecca still looking at the list of names.
“It’s strange, isn’t it, seeing it written down like that?” she said and Marin waited, sensing there was more. “1892 to 1918,” she clarified. “He was twenty-six years old.”
“So many young men lost their lives in the Great War,” Marin said. She felt as if that wasn’t the right thing to say, yet she couldn’t discern Rebecca’s mood.
“It reminds me of their gravestones,” Rebecca said, and looked up from the paper. “Mum and Dad’s. The dates. It’s so final, isn’t it? An ending point.”
Marin nodded. They’d had the final headstones put in right before they’d come up here, and although Rebecca hadn’t said anything at the time, Marin had wondered if it had hit her hard. She couldn’t think of anything to say now; she could hardly refute it.
Rebecca stared down at the paper again, silent, and then she suddenly looked up and said, “Let’s go out to the garden.”
“You mean the walled garden—” Marin began in surprise, and Rebecca nodded.
“Yes. Joss Fowler opened the door, didn’t he? I haven’t even seen it.”
“All right,” Marin said and went for her coat. It was still raining big, icy drops as they stepped outside, pulling the hoods of their coats over their heads.
Marin led the way around the back of Bower House to the door in the wall. She hooked her boot under the bottom of the door just as Joss had, and it swung open easily, revealing the walled garden in all of its dripping, tangled glory.
They both stared at it, the endless brambles rising like a wall of thorns, the intriguing mossy stones barely visible below. Marin felt a contradictory surge of both determination and despair. What on earth was she going to do with a garden this size, even if she managed to clear away all the brambles?
“That’s what happens,” Rebecca said, and Marin turned to her, nonplussed. Rebecca nodded towards the garden. “It might have been beautiful once, and used and loved by that girl in the photograph, Eleanor or Katherine or whoever it was, but this is what it is now. This is what happens to everything.” And with one last hard stare at the garden, she turned on her heel and walked back to the house.