Penny Jordan - The Hidden Years

When her mother had first come to Cottingdean, neither the borders nor the vista had existed, just a wild tangle of weeds. What faith she must have had in the future to plan this mellow green perfection out of such chaos, and yet how could she have had? Cottingdean had been a decaying, mouldering ruin. There had been no money to restore it, and certainly no money to spend on creating an elegant and useless garden; she had had a husband whose health was uncertain, a baby on the way…no family, no friend, no one to help her, and yet in her first summer at the house she had sat down and planned this view, this garden, knowing that it would take years to mature.

Why? In the past Sage had always attributed her mother’s vision to stubborn pride, to a refusal to let anything stand in the way of her will, and yet now, illuminatingly, she suddenly saw her actions as the kind of wild, impulsive, desperate thing she might have done herself: a fierce battling against the weight of burdens so crippling that one either had to defy them or be destroyed by them.

‘Sage, are you all right?’

As Faye touched her arm in concern, she turned to look at her, unaware of the stark anguish and pain that shadowed her eyes.

‘I was just thinking about Mother’s garden,’ she said shakily, ‘wondering what on earth gave her the faith to believe it would ever come to fruition.’

She could see that Faye didn’t understand: why should she? Faye hadn’t, as yet, read the diaries, and stupidly Sage was reluctant to suggest that she should, not yet… not until… Not until what? It was ridiculous of her to have this sensation of somehow needing to protect her mother, to make sure that… That what? It was her mother’s wish that they all read what she had written…all of them…

‘Here’s Camilla,’ Faye announced, breaking into her too introspective mood. She turned to her daughter as she hurried into the breakfast-room via the terrace and reproached her gently, ‘Darling, I think you ought to have gone upstairs and changed before breakfast, I’m sure Sage doesn’t want to eat hers sitting next to someone who smells of horses…’

‘Gran never minded,’ Camilla said fiercely, as though daring Sage to object.

They had always got on well together, she and this child of David’s, her niece, but now Sage could see in her eyes a shadow of uncertainty and rejection. Because Sage was taking her mother’s place… Because Camilla had known of the lack of love between the two of them, and felt resentful on her grandmother’s behalf. She was such a fiercely loyal child, so deeply emotional and sensitive.

‘Neither do I,’ Sage responded equably, and then asked, ‘Did you enjoy your ride? I rather envied you when Jenny told me you’d gone down to the stables.’

She sat down, taking care to avoid the chair which had always been her mother’s, the one which afforded the best view of the garden.

Without seeming to be, she was aware of Camilla watching her, aware of the younger girl’s faint relaxation as Sage said calmly to Faye, ‘I think you’re going to have to take over Mother’s job of pouring the coffee, Faye. I never did get the knack of doing it without dripping the stuff everywhere…’

‘Gran told me that it used to be a test that would-be mothers-in-law set for their sons’ girlfriends: to make them pour the tea,’ Camilla informed them.

Sage laughed. ‘So that’s why I’ve never managed to get myself a husband. I’ve often wondered.’

They all laughed, the atmosphere lightening a little. Sage left it to Faye to inform Camilla that they were all going to visit the hospital together. While she was doing so, Jenny came in with a cardboard box, full of newspaper-wrapped shapes, which Sage realised must be her mother’s Sèvres breakfast set.

‘I’ve put in a packet of her favourite tea, Russian Caravan, and some of those biscuits she likes so much…’

‘Is that for Gran?’ Camilla asked Jenny curiously.

‘Yes, Sage thought that Liz would enjoy having her tea out of her favourite Sèvres breakfast set and she asked me to wrap it up so that she could take it to the hospital.’

‘Oh, yes… Gran loves that set, she always said…says…’ Camilla faltered, darting a quick, anxious look at her mother ‘…that it makes her tea taste extra specially good.’

‘Well, it will be a long time before she can actually use it,’ Sage warned her, not adding the words all of them felt—a long time, if ever…

‘Sage will want to make an early start,’ Faye informed her daughter. ‘She’s standing in for your grandmother at tonight’s meeting of the action committee and she wants to spend later this afternoon going through Liz’s files, so as soon as you’ve finished your breakfast I suggest you go upstairs and get changed.’

‘And then I think that perhaps from tomorrow you can go back to school,’ Sage suggested quietly but firmly, pretending not to see the grateful look Faye gave her.

When asked for her opinion Camilla had objected to being sent away to boarding-school, and instead had asked her mother and grandmother if she could attend a very good local day school. She was now in her A level year, with a good prospect of getting to Oxford, if she worked hard, and on this subject at least Sage didn’t need to wonder what her mother would have wanted Camilla to do.

‘I know you’ll be anxious about your grandmother,’ she continued, seeing the words already springing to Camilla’s lips, ‘but if you’re honest with yourself, Cam, you’ll know that she’d have wanted you to continue with your school work. She’s so proud of you… Every time I see her she tells me how thrilled she is that you’ll probably be going to Oxford. The last thing she’d want would be for you to neglect your studies—and don’t worry. We’ll make sure that you get to visit her, even if it means my taking you in to London myself.’

‘I wish she were closer to us… Can’t she be transferred to Bristol or Bath?’

‘Not at this stage,’ Sage told her, adding gently, ‘She’s in the best possible place, Camilla… The facilities at St Giles’s are among the most advanced in the country. Perhaps later when she’s recuperating…’

She wondered if she ought to do more to prepare her niece for the visual gravity of the intensive care ward with its machinery and tubes, its high-tech austerity and the shocking contrast of one pale, frail human body among all that alien machinery, and then decided not to do so. Camilla was of a different generation, a generation for whom machinery, no matter how complex, was accepted as a matter of course. Camilla might not necessarily find the sight of the intensive care ward shocking as she had done, but rather reassuring, taking comfort from the knowledge that the most advanced techniques were being used to support the frail thread of life.

∗ ∗ ∗

Sage was driving through the heavy London traffic when Camilla suddenly asked her, ‘How are you getting on with the diaries…? I meant to ask you last night, but I’d gone to bed before you’d finished.’

‘I haven’t finished the first one yet,’ Sage lied, knowing that she was making an excuse for not yet having passed the diary on to Faye as they had arranged.

‘What’s in it? Anything interesting?’

Sage had no idea what to say. Her fingers tensed on the wheel and as she fumbled for words, for something to say, Faye unwittingly came to her rescue by telling her daughter, ‘Liz wanted us all to read the diaries separately…to learn from them individually…’

‘Yes, that’s right, she did.’

‘Will you finish the first one tonight, then?’ Camilla pressed.

It was almost as though she sensed her caution, her reluctance to discuss the diaries, the fact that she was deliberately withholding something from them, Sage recognised.