to allow oneself to slip back in time here, if only in the imagination, Sara thought, marvelling at the intricacy and cleverness of a cleverly fashioned knot garden.
There was an avenue of clipped yews and quiet, shadowed pathways that led to small, secret, enclosed gardens with old-fashioned, wrought-iron benches. In one was a sundial, engraved with quotations from Shakespeare’s sonnets, and in another a white-painted summer-house, shaped like a small pavilion.
How could her mother have endured to leave all this? Sara could only marvel at the power of human emotions. Had she been brought up here, could she have turned her back on it and the love of her parents to go off with a man like her father?
Perhaps it was the insecurity of her own childhood from which had grown this deep-rooted need for security. Her mother, the child of such security, might not have experienced its need quite so sharply. It was true that familiarity could breed contempt.
The gardens had such serenity, such a sense of time and timelessness. She listened as Harrison told her how each individual garden had come into being.
He had been with her parents for many years. His family came from the village, he told her. He was in his sixties, a wiry, weathered man with a quiet voice and very sharp eyes.
Tom had taken to him immediately. Like her, Tom craved security… and love.
‘Do you have any dogs here?’ Tom asked earnestly, and Sara quailed a little, remembering Cressy’s unkind promise to him.
‘Not now,’ Harrison told him, shaking his head. ‘We did once, but your grandmother says she’s too old now for a young dog.’
They saw the peacocks and their wives, strutting beside the lake, fanning their tales in rage as humans invaded their domain. Tom stared at them in awe, fascinated by the iridescent ‘eyes’ in their tails.
‘A present from Queen Victoria, they was,’ Harrison told them, and Sara knew that he referred to the birds’ original antecedents. How many stories this house must hold, how many secrets! But it lacked the brooding quality that hung like a miasma over so many old houses.
With very little imagination she could almost believe she could hear the sound of children’s laughter; almost believe she could see all those long-ago children who must once have played in these gardens. As her children might, perhaps, one day play here.
It was an odd thought to have, and one that made her suddenly immensely aware of a deep inner loneliness she had been experiencing for some time.
She loved Tom and she loved Cressy. She knew she would love her grandmother as well, but Sara knew that that was not enough. She wanted to experience the same kind of love her mother must once have felt for her father; the kind of love that transcended everything else; the kind of love that was shared between a man and a woman.
Tom dragged slightly on her hand and she checked herself immediately. He must be tired, although already there was more colour in his face, a new happiness in his eyes.
‘I don’t know about Harrison and you, Tom, but I’m ready for some of Anna’s coffee,’ she said diplomatically, knowing how sensitive Tom was about his fragility.
She saw from the relief in his eyes that she was right, and that he was tired.
‘Let’s go inside, shall we?’ she suggested.
‘Do you know, Sara, I’m very glad we came here,’ he pronounced when they were sitting at Anna’s kitchen table, munching home-made biscuits and drinking coffee in Sara’s case and lemonade in Tom’s. ‘It makes me feel sort of happy inside being here.’
Sara knew exactly what he meant.
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