The Memory Garden Read Online Free
Author: Rachel Hore
noticed the needle-fine detail of the stamens, the light wash of colour blushing deeper towards the centre of the blooms, the gloss of the wood. It was meticulously observed and executed.
She replaced the magnolia and moved to consider the others. There was a creamy rhododendron macabeanum, a scarlet camellia, a purple iris and two kinds of rose. Each picture was as exquisite as the last. And each was signed P.T. Before she replaced the sixth and last on the wall, she turned it over hoping for a date. But the brown-paper backing was blank.
A plastic travel alarm clock on the mantelpiece, looking as out of place as the telly in this dingy Victorian setting, showed five to ten. Mel went to haul the suitcases upstairs.
In the larger of the two bedrooms the Victorian oak double bed, she was relieved to see, was made up with a plump duvet, rather than old-fashioned sheets and blankets. However, the musty smell was, if anything, more intense in here. She dumped the cases on the floor, wondering where she would stow everything tomorrow. By the door was a rough-hewn chest-of-drawers with a wedge of cardboard under one front claw foot. A cracked jug stood in a washing bowl on top and Mel, clutching an armful of clean underwear, traced its painted pattern of storks with her finger.
With her free hand she pulled at the knob of the top drawer, intending to stuff the underwear in it, but the drawer wouldn’t move. She dropped the clothes on the top and tugged at it with both hands. It opened halfway and stuck. Mel peered inside.
Caught at the back was a wad of yellow newspaper which she gently eased out and unfolded. The date was ripped but she held the edges of the tear together until she could read the words March 1912 . Almost one hundred years ago. Her attention was caught by a short piece about a train-load of unemployed tin miners and their families leaving Penzance to join a ship to the Cape from Southampton. The stream of emigrants shows no ebb, but still runs on, as fast and deep as ever . . . the article said.
She turned the paper over. Amidst the advertisements for patent remedies and ladies’ fashions was another news article.
TRAGEDY AT NEWLYN
Soon after ten o’clock on Saturday evening, drinkers were alerted to a sudden blaze in the upper storey of the Blue Anchor Inn by the harbour, (proprietress Mrs Adeline Treglown). An alarm was raised, the building evacuated and help came from the coastguards, some of the crew of His Majesty’s ship Mercury , and fishermen. Although the fire was brought under control, the body of a man has been found in the wreckage. He was later identified as Arthur Reagan, aged 52, a visitor from London. An inquest will be held next week.
Mel read it twice, wondering why someone had kept it. Was it just to line the drawer, she wondered. She refolded the paper and dropped it back in the chest.
As she pulled on an old T-shirt nightdress and brushed her teeth at a little washbasin she thought about events at the Blue Anchor a century ago, imagining that His Majesty’s sailors must have been propping up the bar when the fire broke out, and presumably fought the flames whilst the worse for wear. She wondered at the serendipitous way other lives had leaped out of the past and into her consciousness. She had only been looking for somewhere to stow her knickers and had been given a story instead.
Cornwall was one of the most ghost-ridden counties in England, Mel’s mother had once told her. There was a time when they were children that William relished reading Mel and Chrissie Cornish ghost stories of headless horsemen, of mermaids and spooky lights luring ships onto wrecks until the sisters lay in their beds at night rigid with fear, unable to sleep. There was one particular favourite of his about the ghost of a suicide buried at a crossroads, which could only be prevented from walking by a spear driven into the chest of the corpse. Little Mel would have nightmares about it, waking
She replaced the magnolia and moved to consider the others. There was a creamy rhododendron macabeanum, a scarlet camellia, a purple iris and two kinds of rose. Each picture was as exquisite as the last. And each was signed P.T. Before she replaced the sixth and last on the wall, she turned it over hoping for a date. But the brown-paper backing was blank.
A plastic travel alarm clock on the mantelpiece, looking as out of place as the telly in this dingy Victorian setting, showed five to ten. Mel went to haul the suitcases upstairs.
In the larger of the two bedrooms the Victorian oak double bed, she was relieved to see, was made up with a plump duvet, rather than old-fashioned sheets and blankets. However, the musty smell was, if anything, more intense in here. She dumped the cases on the floor, wondering where she would stow everything tomorrow. By the door was a rough-hewn chest-of-drawers with a wedge of cardboard under one front claw foot. A cracked jug stood in a washing bowl on top and Mel, clutching an armful of clean underwear, traced its painted pattern of storks with her finger.
With her free hand she pulled at the knob of the top drawer, intending to stuff the underwear in it, but the drawer wouldn’t move. She dropped the clothes on the top and tugged at it with both hands. It opened halfway and stuck. Mel peered inside.
Caught at the back was a wad of yellow newspaper which she gently eased out and unfolded. The date was ripped but she held the edges of the tear together until she could read the words March 1912 . Almost one hundred years ago. Her attention was caught by a short piece about a train-load of unemployed tin miners and their families leaving Penzance to join a ship to the Cape from Southampton. The stream of emigrants shows no ebb, but still runs on, as fast and deep as ever . . . the article said.
She turned the paper over. Amidst the advertisements for patent remedies and ladies’ fashions was another news article.
TRAGEDY AT NEWLYN
Soon after ten o’clock on Saturday evening, drinkers were alerted to a sudden blaze in the upper storey of the Blue Anchor Inn by the harbour, (proprietress Mrs Adeline Treglown). An alarm was raised, the building evacuated and help came from the coastguards, some of the crew of His Majesty’s ship Mercury , and fishermen. Although the fire was brought under control, the body of a man has been found in the wreckage. He was later identified as Arthur Reagan, aged 52, a visitor from London. An inquest will be held next week.
Mel read it twice, wondering why someone had kept it. Was it just to line the drawer, she wondered. She refolded the paper and dropped it back in the chest.
As she pulled on an old T-shirt nightdress and brushed her teeth at a little washbasin she thought about events at the Blue Anchor a century ago, imagining that His Majesty’s sailors must have been propping up the bar when the fire broke out, and presumably fought the flames whilst the worse for wear. She wondered at the serendipitous way other lives had leaped out of the past and into her consciousness. She had only been looking for somewhere to stow her knickers and had been given a story instead.
Cornwall was one of the most ghost-ridden counties in England, Mel’s mother had once told her. There was a time when they were children that William relished reading Mel and Chrissie Cornish ghost stories of headless horsemen, of mermaids and spooky lights luring ships onto wrecks until the sisters lay in their beds at night rigid with fear, unable to sleep. There was one particular favourite of his about the ghost of a suicide buried at a crossroads, which could only be prevented from walking by a spear driven into the chest of the corpse. Little Mel would have nightmares about it, waking
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