Sally Wentworth - Garden of Thorns Read online

  They stopped for a belated breakfast on the way, so it was almost noon before Kirsty pulled up outside Briar Cottage. She looked at Penny anxiously, wondering what her sister would think of her choice. 'Well, this is it,' she said over-heartily.

  Penny got out of the van and walked to the gate, looking up at the cottage much as Kirsty had done the day she bought it. In looks the sisters were very similar, both having fair hair, but Penny was shorter and her face lacked the fineness of feature of Kirsty's, so that Penny was only pretty whereas Kirsty was almost beautiful. For a long moment she stared at the house and then she turned to them.

  Her face split into a big grin. 'It's great!' she enthused. 'I just can't wait to get started on it!'

  Kirsty felt a great surge of relief; she had been so afraid that Penny might have taken a dislike to the place on sight. She found that she had been gripping Simon's hand hard and now he put his arm round her and gave her a hug.

  'Come on, open up. Let's see what the place is like inside.'

  They walked up the garden path, followed by the others who were dressed in a motley collection of colourful sweaters; scarves, jeans, boots, all their old casual clothes for their working weekend. Rather tremblingly Kirsty inserted the key and went t6 push the door open.

  'Wait!' Rory exclaimed. 'This is a great moment, we have to do it properly. 'He ran back to the van and came back with a bottle of sparkling wine. 'Here you are, launch it with this.'

  Laughingly Kirsty took the bottle from him and made Penny hold it with her while they smashed the neck against the wall of the cottage. Rory had given it a good shake so it made a terrific bang and they all cheered noisily. He then produced some paper cups filched from the coffee machine at the hospital and they all drank a toast. 'To Briar Cottage. May God bless her and all who sail in her! Rory intoned with complete lack of imagination.

  They all cheered again and then Simon stooped to put Kirsty over his shoulder in a very unromantic fireman's lift. 'I insist on carrying you over the threshold,' he announced.

  Kirsty shrieked-as he picked her up and grabbed hold of him, still clutching the bottle in her other hand. "You fool, you'll drop me!"

  'Are you denigrating my manhood?' he demanded in mock anger, and ran down the path with her just to show her how strong he was.

  She yelled in pretended fright, then glanced up to find herself looking straight at a man who had got out of a white Range-Rover parked on the other side of the road and had been staring at the painted hospital van in amazement, but as she yelled he turned round and looked at her, still hanging over Simon'‘ shoulder and waving the bottle. She got the impression that he was tall, dark, and broad-shouldered, but it was his face that made her go suddenly silent, for his eyes, hard as grey steel, were regarding her with a look of furious anger. For a moment he continued to glare at her, but his expression changed to one of disgust as his eyes ran over them all, then he turned abruptly, got back into his car and drove away down the lane at the side of the cottage.

  The visual impact of those few seconds left Kirsty feeling distinctly shaken and she was rather subdued as Simon finally carried her through the front door and set her down in the half. They insisted that she conduct them round herself and she tried to join naturally in their merriment as they explored the big kitchen on the left of the hall with its ancient range, the sitting-room on the other side, and then the two corresponding bedrooms upstairs and the Victorian-looking bathroom squeezed in between. But somehow she couldn't shake off the feeling of dismay the unknown man had given her. Why had he looked so angry? Admittedly they had been making rather a noise, but surely that wasn't sufficient reason for the almost murderous glare he'd given her. Kirsty frowned unhappily; the last thing she wanted to do was to antagonise their fellow-villagers, after all they would have to live alongside them, and she had a strong feeling that she and Penny would probably need all the help and advice they could get during the coming months when they would be striving to get their herb farm established. One of the others called out to her to unlock her van and she resolutely pushed her anxieties to the back of her mind. No good worrying about it now. Only time would show who the man was and whether his anger would have any effect on their lives in Briar Cottage.

  By six o'clock that evening they were all exhausted, but at least they had removed all the surface grime and dirt from the two bedrooms, the bathroom and the kitchen so that they could bring in all the furniture. And by much searching around the men had found the stopcock in the garden so that they had running water, although the lights wouldn't come on because someone had-carefully removed all the bulbs, and by the time they realised this it was already getting dark and all the village shops were shut.

  'Where's the nearest town?' Simon asked. 'Barham, isn't it? What do you say we clean ourselves up and drive there for a meal? It's getting too dark to do anything more here.'

  So they took turns to use the bathroom and drove into the town. They found a pleasant restaurant on the outskirts, but the manager took one look at their clothes and refused to let them in, so they ended up with hamburgers and chips in a Wimpy bar.

  'This stuff's all right, but you never feel really full up,' grumbled Rory, who devoted a great deal of time and thought to filling his stomach.

  'Well, I did bring an electric cooker with me,' Kirsty pointed out. 'If we can plug that in we can cook our own food tomorrow.'

  Simon laughed. 'Have you looked at the electric sockets in the cottage? They must have been installed when Edison first invented the stuff. The house needs complete rewiring or it will probably blow a fuse and set the whole place on fire.'

  Kirsty looked at him in dismay. 'But that will cost, a bomb-—and we have to have something to cook on.'

  'Why don't we get a couple of the hospital electricians to come down next weekend and do it for you as a spare-time job? That would cost you a lot less than if you got a contractor to do it—cut down on waiting time too.'

  'Do you think they would?'

  Don't see why not. They don't get paid very much and would probably be glad of the opportunity to earn some extra cash.'

  Penny had been listening to them quietly, but now she said eagerly, 'Why don't we use the range for cooking? Just like the other people who lived there did.' '

  'But, Penny, it's In a terrible state. I was going to throw it out.'

  'Well, it could be cleaned, couldn't it? And it would give us some heat as well as providing an oven.'

  'Yes, and I was looking at that fireplace in the sitting-room,' Rory put in. I'm sure it's a later addition and that there's an older fireplace behind it.'

  Without thinking, Kirsty said, 'Yes, when I was buying the place I heard a man say he thought there was probably an inglenook in the wall.'

  They picked du's up immediately and before she knew it the men had all decided they would remove the tiled fireplace the following day to see what was behind it.

  'And I'll start cleaning the range! Penny added enthusiastically.

  Kirsty suddenly, realised that her labour force, who had come down with the definite objective of starting work on the garden, had defected. She opened her mouth to protest but saw the grins on their faces and thought better of it. Rather a happy crowd doing what they wanted than reluctant gardeners. When they got back to the cottage it was too early to go to.' bed, so they sat in a tight circle on the kitchen floor, huddled together to keep warm, and told ghost stories by the light of a torch. There was much moaning and howling from the storytellers and Penny shrieked with fright when Rory sneaked his hand behind her and touched her neck at a particularly grisly point in his story.

  They went giggling to-bed, men in one room, girls in the other, and Kirsty insisted that Penny and the other girl take the two single beds while she curled up in a sleeping-bag. She slept at first, worn out by the hard work of the day, but woke in the early hours, frozen with cold. Shivering, she got up and pulled on a dressing-gown over her nightdress. She remembered that the spare blankets were
still stacked in the hall, so she pushed her feet into a pair of mules and slipped quietly out of the room. The stairs creaked as she went down, but the moon was shining brightly through the uncurtained window on the half landing, and she had no difficulty in finding a blanket. She was about to go back up again, but gave a gasp of fear as she saw the dark shape of someone standing on the stairs.

  'It's all right, it's only me,' Simon's whispered voice assured her.

  Kirsty leant against the wall in relief. 'Oh, you gave me such a scare! I thought you were a ghost.'

  He came down and put his arm round her, pulling her down to sit beside him on the stairs. 'Can't you sleep?'

  She shook her head. 'I was cold. This place is going to take some getting used to after a centrally heated apartment.'

  'Here, I'll keep you warm.' Simon pulled her closer, his hands rubbing her arms, but presently his hands slowed as he drew her towards him and began to kiss her. At last he raised his head and said thickly, 'Oh, Kirsty, I'm going to miss you.' His hand cupped her breast over the thin cotton of her nightdress, his thumb gently caressing her. 'Life isn't going .to be the same without your smile to look forward to every day after surgery.'

  Gently Kirsty removed his hand and held it. 'You know I didn't want it this way. I had no choice! You must come down as often as you can.'

  'I know.' He bent to kiss her again and then smiled as he said, 'But this place will really have a ghost soon; I'm going to haunt it regularly, you wait and see.'

  They talked for a little longer, but then the cold drove them back to their sleeping-bags. Kirsty wrapped herself in the blanket and fell quickly asleep again, not waking until a hazy sunshine fell on her face. Getting up, she went to the window and looked out, realising that this was the first time she had been able to do so on a dear day. The garden was as tangled and overgrown as, ever, but she looked past it to the unkempt hedge at the end of the garden, behind which lay a large field where a herd of Jersey cows were grazing. As she watched a man and a boy came to round them up and drive them through a gate towards a farm almost hidden in the fold of a hill. Then Rimy caught her breath in a little gasp of pleasure. About a mile .above the farm, on the flat piece of land on the brow of the hill and almost surrounded by trees, she could just make out a large E-shaped Tudor house of deep-red brickwork with tall, ornate chimneys. It looked so beautiful in the early morning sunlight, and so much part of ,the landscape, that it seemed to have grown there with the trees and to be destined to be there for ever. It was a lovely place, the kind you always dream about possessing.

  She heard voices from the other bedroom and turned reluctantly, hurrying to get to the bathroom first, the more practical side of her nature taking over from the aesthetic.

  Any hopes she had of making a start on the garden that day were doomed from the outset; as soon as she picked up a pair of secateurs and made a start on cutting back the rambler rose at the front of the cottage she was interrupted by demands for tools to take out, the fireplace, metal polish to clean the brasswork on the range, where could they dump the rubbish, had she got a wire brush? Until in the end she just gave up and acted as general dogsbody, making coffee on the primus stove that Rory had brought with him, cutting sandwiches, and watching the kitchen get black with soot and dirt from the range and the sitting-room disappear beneath mounds of old bricks and concrete, while she expected the wall to collapse at any moment as the hole the men made got deeper and deeper.

  But at four in the afternoon they triumphantly brought her into the room and showed her that they had been right. Exposed to the light of day again after goodness knows how many years was the huge oak bean supporting the chimney, and behind it the recess of the old fireplace, deep and high enough to walk right inside and wide enough to have roasted an animal carcase Whole,

  'Look,' Rory pointed. 'See that smaller hole at the back? That's what we think they used to use as the bread oven. The bricks around it held the heat and cooked the loaves slowly.'

  It's marvelous,’ Kirsty applauded, trying not to think of how she was going to dispose of what looked like a couple of tons of rubble.

  'Of course it still needs a lot of work doing to it,' Rory added. 'The brickwork needs rubbing down with a wire brush and the beam needs to be cleaned and treated, but we've done the biggest part of the job for you,' he said as if he'd done her a favour.

  'Lord, look at the time!'- Simon exclaimed. 'If we don't start back to London straight away we'll be like zombies in the morning, and I'm assisting at a brain op.'

  They rushed round getting their things together and hastily threw them into the big van. Simon gave her a quick hug. 'Phone me during the week and I'll let you know about the electricians.' And then they were off, horn blaring, with Kirsty and Penny waving at the garden gate until they were out of sight. After they'd gone the two sisters looked at one another, feeling strangely bereft and alone.

  'It was nice of them to come down, wasn't it?' Penny remarked. 'They were a great help.'

  Kirsty walked into the house and looked at the shambles in the sitting-room. 'Oh, yes, they were a great help—but somehow I've a feeling that we would have got a lot more done if we'd been on our own! And they both burst into rueful laughter.

  The following morning they made a long list of things they needed and drove into the town, to shop.

  'I'm sure I noticed a garden centre a couple of miles outside the town when we drove here the other night,' Kirsty remarked. 'I'm hoping that we'll be able to hire a rotovator and perhaps a power saw to cut down those dead trees. It would have been better if we could have bought a rotovator, of course, but having to pay more for the house puts that out of the question. We shall need the rest of our capital to live on and to buy plants to start us off.'

  'There's the place,' Penny told her. Over on the right.'

  Kirsty pulled in to the car-park and they walked towards the shop. It was very well laid out with a large outdoor part displaying greenhouses, sheds and so on, a huge hothouse full of indoor plants, and a supermarket-type shop with bulbs, seeds, and everything else you could think of remotely connected with gardening. As it was a Monday morning they had the place to themselves, and when they told the assistant what they wanted, they were directed to an office where a rather dapper young man rose to greet them,

  'Good morning. I'm the manager, Alan Morris. What can I do for you ladies?' he said jocularly.

  Kirsty explained what they wanted and arranged to hire the tools straight away.

  'I'll make out the forms, then. You realise you'll have to pay a substantial deposit? It's expensive equipment to have to replace if it gets damaged,' the manager told them.

  'Yes, of course. I'll write you a cheque.' Kirsty opened her bag and took out her cheque book, but the manager shook his head regretfully.

  'Sorry, but we insist on cash for deposits.'

  'Oh, well, never mind. We've got to go into Barham to do some shopping anyway. I'll go to the bank while I'm there and we'll pick the tools up on the way back.'

  'That will be fine. If you'll just fill in your name and address on the hire form.’

  Kirsty did so and passed it back to him.

  'Briar Cottage.' Alan Morris looked up and she thought she saw a flicker of recognition in his eye’;' but it-was gone so quickly that she might have been mistaken. 'Oh, yes, I heard that had been sold, but I didn't think anyone would have moved in so soon. Well, I'll see you later, then.' He came to Open the door for them. 'It's always a pleasure to do business with two lovely young ladies like you,' he added fulsomely, running his eyes over them as they passed him, mentally undressing them.

  'Yuk! Penny said as soon as they got outside. 'I hope we don't have to deal with him too often. He made my flesh creep.'

  'I know what you mean,' Kirsty agreed. 'He's the type who would take it as an invitation to start pawing you if you so much as smiled at him.'

  They enjoyed exploring the old market town of Barham and had to make several trips back to the van as
they made their purchases: a dozen light bulbs, a paraffin heater and fuel, food, a fork and handsaw— the list seemed endless. For lunch they had a basket snack in an old coaching inn, and discussed their plan of work beside a roaring fire.

  'We must start on the garden,' Kirsty emphasised. 'After all, it's supposed to provide us with a living, and if we don't get it prepared now it will be too late to plant the herb seeds.'

  'Not all of them have to be sown in March,' Penny pointed out. 'Tarragon, sage and chives should be planted in April. But' I agree that the garden must be our first concern. What about the inglenook, though?'

  'I'm just going to shut the door on that room and so forget it,' Kirsty replied firmly. 'Luckily the kitchen is plenty big enough to use as a living-room as well. We can put a couple of armchairs in there for the evenings and the rest of the furniture will have to stay in the bedrooms for the time being.' She looked at her watch. 'We'd better start getting back to the garden centre.'

  They went straight into Alan Morris's office, expecting him to greet them as unctuously as he had before, but instead he seemed somewhat embarrassed.

  'We've called to pick up the rotovator,' Kirsty reminded him.

  'Er—yes.' He looked down at his desk, unwilling to meet their eyes. 'I'm afraid there's been a bit of a mix-up; we don't have the tools you want available, after all.'

  'What? But you said this morning that——'

  'I know I did, but as I said, the tools were already spoken for.' He shrugged. 'I'm sorry, but there it is.'

  'Being sorry isn't good enough,' Kirsty retorted, her anger rising. 'You promised those tools to us. We had first claim.' She put her hands on the desk and leaned forward, glaring at the manager.,

  'It's no use getting angry with me, Miss Naylor. I'm only the manager here. I have to do as I'm told,' Alan Morris said defensively.

  Kirsty gazed at-him. 'Are you—are you trying to tell me that someone told you not to hire the tools out to us?'