valet. This morning when Mrs Williams had brought the breakfast tray into the dining room her ladyship had sat there at the head of the table as usual but she had spoken no word; her face was white, almost transparent with exhaustion, the lines beneath her eyes blue-black. Staring in front of her she made no sign, spoke no word of greeting or command and putting down the tray Mrs Williams had crept away and cried.
Staring after the old man Amanda shivered. Perhaps he was blind? But surely he would have sensed her there so close to him on the path? She could see him now, pottering about in the greenhouse, bent, slow moving, deliberate in his movements as he groped amongst the rubbish on the staging.
Nearby the blackbird burst once more into song. With a sudden shock Amanda looked round. When she turned back to the greenhouse the old man was no longer in sight. She bit her lip, conscious of a rash of goose pimples across her skin and, hurrying now, tiptoed back the way she had come.
He banked up the bonfire as it grew dark, put away his tools and stood for a moment staring up at the sky. The first ice from the north was sharp. It would be a hard winter. Shrugging, he walked slowly back towards the greenhouse and went inside. Closing the door he stood for a moment in the soft darkness. The air still carried a trace of heat from the sun but already the chill was building. He lit his lantern and stood it on the staging, waiting for the flame to steady and the shadows to stop their wild jumping. The old wooden chair, where he used to sit to eat his piece and drink the tea one of the maids would bring him stood now beside his untidy workbench. He reached for the packet of cigarettes and drew one out with a shaking hand. The pull on the nicotine was good. It steadied him. Made him feel calm. Sitting there he watched the smoke drift up around his head as the temperature began to drop.
As the leaves began to droop and the brown touch of the frost claimed the first blooms, turning the plants to pulp, he threw down the cigarette end and climbed onto the chair. His long scarf made a gentle noose for the scraggy neck as he hooked the end over the curved nail in the roof support. He gave a wry smile as he pulled it tight. No more than an old turkey cock who must die at last. He shivered. Around him he could hear the plants dying. His own death, he thought, as he kicked away the chair, would be less hard.
Amanda stopped. She turned towards the greenhouse. From somewhere she could smell burning leaves. She frowned. It was an autumnal smell; aromatic and smoky, redolent of cold days and frosty nights. She shuddered again, violently this time, suddenly acutely aware of ice in the still, summer air.
The chain-link fence rose six foot in front of her, a barrier between her and home. The foothold which had hoisted her over was on the far side. For a moment she stood, defeated, aware that her neighbour was watching her from one of the upper windows of her house. With a smile and a shrug Amanda turned back towards the trees to look for something to stand on.
From the bedroom window she could see the reflections on the glass in the evening sunlight. A different angle, a different colour, it was as beautiful as in the morning, but warmer, richer, more textured.
As soon as she had dropped back onto her own square of bare earth and ducked into her house her neighbour had knocked on her door, baby on hip, and smiled conspiratorially. ‘I saw you over there. You’ve got more courage than me. I’ve wanted to explore that garden since the day we moved in.’
She was, it seemed, a kindred spirit after all. And she knew the story. The fall of the family fortunes, the gambling debts, the frost and then at last the fire that destroyed the house.
‘There is no entrance to the garden,’ she said as they sat down over a cup of coffee, the baby, quiet at last, playing at their feet. ‘My husband has seen the plans of the estate. They sold off all the land bit by bit after the fire – that was sometime between the two World Wars, I think – then the owners moved away. The son, or perhaps it’s the grandson, still owns just that last couple of acres, but he never bothered or noticed that there was no access to it. It can’t be sold. It can’t be entered. It can’t be touched by the developers or the council or anyone.’ She smiled at Amanda. ‘A secret garden – with no one to look after it. Safe. No one to spoil it.’ She paused, and added sadly, ‘No one to love it.’
‘Oh, there’s still someone to love it.’ Amanda returned the smile and bending down she gave the baby a biscuit. ‘The gardener’s still there.’
Her new friend’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You don’t mean –?’
Amanda nodded. ‘He’s still looking after it. He’s keeping it safe. And I don’t think he would mind if you and I go there from time to time. In fact, I don’t think he would even notice.’
It was an irony that she would like to have shared with Andrew but probably never could: the new house in the ancient garden; the dreams and nightmares there beneath the untrodden floor and on the far side of the fence.
The rain was streaming down the office windows as I folded my letter booking the cottage, clipped Peter’s cheque to it and pushed them both into the envelope. I looked again at the address. ‘Ishmacuild.’ The word was a magic spell in itself.
A magic spell. I repeated the phrase out loud, gazing at the orange carpet at my feet, but seeing only silver sand, rippled by wind and tide. Was that why I had chosen the island for our summer holiday; why of all the places in the guide book I had picked a tiny lonely spot like Ishmacuild: because of a magic spell?
‘Your turn to choose where we go this summer, Isobel,’ Peter had said with a grin. ‘Don’t choose the Bahamas though, will you? I don’t think the family coffers will quite run to that.’
In the five years of our marriage it had worked out that way. He had chosen one year and I the next, each seeing places we might not have dreamed of otherwise, for our tastes were so different. I, the dreamer, seeking lonely places or sites steeped in history, and Peter, the energetic sportsman, choosing lively walking, sailing and exploring holidays. Such an arrangement could have spelled disaster for some marriages, but for ours it was a stimulus and an excitement. We both enjoyed the new efforts we had to make and learned, too, far more about each other than we ever would have done had we reached a dreary compromise each year.
The next time I was in the public library I crossed to the travel shelves and scanned the titles. I knew roughly what I wanted: the Scottish Highlands and Islands. I, with the maiden name of Macdonald, had never been there. My father had always said that our family came from Scotland years ago, and although we’d often talked about it we had never visited it when I was a child. This year, I was determined, I was going to remedy that. I reached down a volume and flipped slowly through the pages, glancing at the breathtaking photographs. There were so many places to choose from, so many lovely things to see. I took the book home and with it another of stories and legends. It was in this second book that I found Ishmacuild:
Below the picturesque village, deep amongst the rocks, lies the magic fairy pool where countless generations of Macdonald women have gone by moonlight with a gift of gold to ensure the birth to the family of a son and heir …
I blinked and read on quickly. That was a very unhappy subject and one I tried to put out of my mind, but somehow over the next few days my thoughts insisted on turning back to that magic pool. After all I was a Macdonald woman, and I desperately wanted a son and heir.
The first two years of our marriage had been intentionally childless. The last three not so. Neither of us had worried at first and we had used the chance we had to go to concerts
