‘Grandad, it’s me, January,’ I say, as Ward and I settle him into his armchair. I kneel down beside him. ‘I’ve been trying to call you. What happened?’
His watery eyes look into mine. ‘Darling.’ Slowly he comes round, clutching my hand. ‘I must have taken a tumble.’ He glances at Ward, still confused.
‘This is Ward,’ I tell him, keeping my hand firmly in his. ‘We did a pitch locally, so we thought we’d drop by.’
Ward approaches us. ‘Hello,’ he says with warmth. ‘I hope you’re not hurt?’
Grandad waves an arm. ‘I’m fine, quite all right. I came in here to do the crossword, I must have… I can’t remember what.’ He scratches his head, muddled.
‘Doesn’t matter, the main thing is you’re OK. How about I make us all a cup of tea and something for lunch?’ I say, catching Grandad taking in this tall figure in front of him with thick dark hair, dressed in a suit. ‘Stay put, Grandad,’ I say, but he insists on getting up to help me make the tea and dig out the treacle biscuits.
‘What’s he doing selling houses?’ he whispers, leaning heavily on my arm. ‘He could be a film star.’
After tea and a toasted cheese sandwich Grandad insists he feels better so, before it gets dark, Ward asks if he can take a walk round the garden and maybe head down to the beach. Ward gazes out of the sitting-room window, towards the dark grey sea. ‘January told me the view was special, but it’s not until you see it that you understand.’
‘Bad luck,’ Grandad says, with a twinkle in his eye. ‘It’s not for sale.’
Minutes later Grandad puts on his coat and picks up his stick and we take Ward out through the kitchen door that leads to the back of the house. Slowly and carefully we walk up a few steps and through a gate. Ward notices the letters P and T carved on the gate, along with a date. ‘Patricia, my wife and me, Timothy,’ Grandad says, as we approach Granny’s kitchen garden and her greenhouse.
‘January can vouch for my ignorance when it comes to gardening,’ Ward says, before he tells Grandad about the time I’d won him a pitch because I knew about snake’s heads and bee orchids. ‘The only flowers I’ve heard of are roses and daisies,’ Ward continues, making Grandad chuckle.
Winter doesn’t show this space at its best. Instead I imagine it in the spring, with neat rows of vegetables pushing up, divided into sections, along with the handsome and bold artichoke plant, towering above the young plants like a silvery-green fountain. I tell Ward how Granny had introduced me to gardening when I was ten. ‘I was a professional raker of leaves by eleven.’ I see myself in my flowery pink-and-yellow coat and navy gumboots, pushing my wheelbarrow filled with carrots, potatoes and lettuces. I tell Ward how much I loved being in her greenhouse, sunlight beaming through the windows. I could still hear the sound of bumble bees against the glass. ‘Granny’s greenhouse smelt of growth, of earth, goodness and heat. There was a chair here,’ I point, ‘where she’d often take a nap or do the crossword.’ I see her dressed in her faithful old gardening trousers, hair tied back in a headscarf, pricking out her seedlings. ‘People need light and warmth, then they flourish just like these plants,’ she’d say, before touching her herbs or tomatoes, saying, ‘These are doing nicely,’ or ‘I’m very proud of my peas, January. Come and take a look.’ I recall the excitement of growing my own basil and mint, and of planting tulips in the autumn and seeing them grow in the spring.
Next we take Ward around the main garden. Grandadsays he needs to take some wood in from the shed. Ward offers to do it for him. The old red swing is still suspended from the shed’s rafters. ‘Isla used to play on it,’ I tell him.
There are many hidden paths in this garden. ‘It must have been a great place for hide-and-seek,’ says Ward, as we cross the lawn, where my school friends and I used to play French cricket. We head out of the gate, towards the beach. Grandad tells Ward that our house was built in 1792 and that the road leading down to the coast used to be nothing more than a grassy lane.
On the way to the beach I point out to Ward the beach car park. ‘Granny used to put Lucas and me on car park duty to make sure people put their pound coin into the honesty box.’
‘And did they?’ Ward asks, amused.
‘If they didn’t they had Lucas to answer to,’ I say. ‘He’d chase them across the car park, shouting, “Cough up!”’
Grandad laughs at that, saying with affection that Lucas hasn’t changed.
After our walk, I show Ward the rest of the house, self-conscious at being alone with him again. ‘It needs some attention,’ I say, when we come into the nursery, where Lucas and I used to watch television. In one corner, by the glass doors that open out into the garden, there’s still the pale-pink doll’s house that Granny bought for Isla. I walk over to the bookshelf and take out a copy of Daphne du Maurier’sRebecca,blowing dust off the top. ‘I remember Grandad telling me about Daphne du Maurier after we moved here. He used to read her books to me by the fire. Her spirit remains everywhere on the coastline.’
Upstairs, I hover by my bedroom door, not wanting Ward to enter, but he walks straight past me.
‘This place has so much charm,’ he says, looking out of the window towards the sea. Tentatively I approach.
‘I was fascinated by the sea and how it changed all the time. Even in the winter, when it was usually grey, it still had this power over me.’
Ward picks up a silver-framed photograph of my mother on my old dressing table. She’s the spitting image of a young Granny with her chestnut hair tied back in a scarf, a baby in a white shawl in her arms.
‘Is this you?’ he asks.
I nod. My head rests against her shoulders, my face turned towards her. My mother’s eyes are closed; I’m fast asleep, so content. I wish I could remember that moment, but I feel it instead, breathing in her vanilla scent, hearing her heart beat close to mine. Tearful, I nod again. ‘That’s my mum.’
Ward looks at me. ‘She was beautiful,’ he says. ‘Like you.’
This time I don’t turn away.
‘I mean it, Jan. You’re beautiful.’
‘Why won’t it start?’ I say to Ward as he turns on the engine again but it splutters to nothing.
‘It’s been a bit temperamental lately.’
