The Memory Garden by Rachel Hore

Author:Rachel Hore [Hore, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

When she returned to the cottage, it was to find a phone message from Rowena from college. Would Mel act as second marker for the students’ essays this term?

‘Like heck I will,’ said Mel out loud as she banged down the receiver. Real life was the last thing she wanted to think about at the moment.

Chapter 17

***

September 1912

‘Another over here, girl,’ ordered Mr Carey’s fat friend the lawyer, waving his empty wine glass.

Pearl passed among the party guests in the silvery twilight with a tray of drinks while still managing to keep an eye on Charles and the fascinating group of unconventionally dressed visitors standing apart, near the fountain. His birthday party had, in the end, had to wait until the harvest was over and now, well into September, there was a distinct chill in the evening air and some of the guests were drifting inside. The artistic contingent, however, seemed impervious to the weather.

The lively woman in the bright green dress was Laura Knight, she knew. Mrs Knight was exchanging banter with a tall, wide-shouldered, narrow-hipped man in a loud checked suit, throwing back her head to laugh uproariously. That must be Mr Munnings, then – A.J., as Charles called him – the one living at Mr Jorey’s in the village, who painted horses and amused everybody by singing hunting songs. Pearl pressed her lips together, remembering last Sunday afternoon at her drawing lesson when Charles described to her the people she might expect to see, making her laugh by mimicking Munnings’s flamboyant gestures. He had, she saw now, got Munnings to the life.

‘Who’s that one behind them?’ she whispered to Jenna as they stood together at the edge of the crowd, nodding towards an intense-looking man with greying hair sitting gloomily on the concrete rim of the pond, trailing his empty glass in the water.

Jenna screwed up her eyes. ‘Mr Knight, I should say. And that talking to him now . . .’ for a big, handsome man with an easy, friendly manner had wandered over to Harold Knight, who sat up straighter and instantly became more cheerful, ‘is Mr Birch – they call him Lamorna.’

Pearl saw the mistress beckoning from the crowd and nudged Jenna in front, who went across with her tray. Left alone, Pearl’s eyes moved to Charles, something uncoiling inside her as she admired his long, lithe figure propped languorously against a pillar of the summerhouse where he flirted with a young woman with a cloud of fair hair. She glanced back to Mr Birch. She had seen him before, she remembered now. Up on the cliffs near Mousehole where she had strolled on an afternoon off with her sketchbook. He’d nodded to her as he stood aside to let her pass and after a moment she had turned round and gazed at his tall, upright frame striding back towards Lamorna Cove.

‘Come on, girl, don’t moon, fetch the other tarts and look sharp about it.’ Cook, bearing a huge tray of pies – apple,

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