Free The Memory Garden by Rachel Hore Page B

the hoot of owls, she slipped into sleep.
     
     
     

Chapter 4
     
    It wasn’t until the following Friday that Patrick Winterton arrived, although every day Mel listened out for a strange car in the drive, wondered if today he would come.
    She spent a productive week, engrossing herself in her work. On the Monday she visited the Victor Pasmore art gallery in the old fishing town of Newlyn, though the beautiful small building itself had been of more interest to her than the modern conceptual artworks currently showcased within. It was easy enough, standing alone on the wind-bludgeoned cliff, staring across to St Michael’s Mount, to sense the appeal of the place for the artists of a century ago. Today’s fishermen wore luminous waistcoats rather than traditional Guernsey sweaters and woollen hats, and a single company now dominated the distribution of the fish at a modern covered market, where once fishermen and their wives had cried their wares on the shingle, but the place had the same sober sense of purpose that it must have done one hundred years before, and memorials of recent tragedies bore witness to the continued dangers of bringing in the harvest of the sea.
    Tuesday and Wednesday she studied paintings in Perlee House art gallery in Penzance and spent hours reading in the Morrab Library,. It was fascinating to discover how the local fishing community had seemed to accept the invasion by painters from the Midlands, London and elsewhere in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Indeed, many had become models for the sometimes tragic tableaux the artists created – In the Midst of Life We Are in Death was the title of one painting, A Hopeless Dawn another. Mel supposed the modern equivalent was being filmed in your daily routine for reality TV.
    By Friday, she realised that she had hardly spoken to anybody for days, unless she counted asking a librarian for a book or the man on the meat counter at the supermarket for sausages. A walk down to the beach is what I need, she thought, and I’ll see if Irina is in for a chat.
    Apart from several hurried visits to the shop for papers and milk, she hadn’t been near the cove again. The day was bright and sunny, and Mel found herself noticing things she had missed on her first walk – late daffodils growing wild, a crumbly old millhouse, the millpond, despite recent rain, little more than a stagnant pool. When she reached the tiny village hall, she saw a poster advertising an art exhibition. After a moment’s hesitation, she went in.
    It was warm and light inside, the high roof and the many windows giving an exhilarating sense of space. The walls were crowned with bright modern prints of Cornish scenes represented by flat blocks of colour. Not great works of art, but they were lively and decorative.
    There was no one else in the room, though she could hear the hiss of a kettle and a chink of china from through a side door, so she enjoyed walking dreamily around by herself, taking time to look at all the prints. The final few pictures were different: half a dozen photographs of the sea hung by themselves in a corner. Unusual, dramatic. She liked them.
    ‘Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in.’ A young man in a crumpled Oxford shirt and shabby cords emerged from the doorway, bearing a steaming mug. He frowned slightly, narrowing his dark eyes. ‘Do I know you?’
    ‘I don’t think so,’ said Mel uncertainly then remembered. ‘Unless . . . yes, we have sort of met. You were one of the divers, weren’t you?’
    ‘Down at the cove last week – yes, that’s where I’ve seen you.’
    ‘Did you find anything?’
    ‘Nah,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Like pea soup down there.’ He placed his mug on the trestle table by the door, his lips curved in what might be a smile or just a natural quizzical expression. He was of average height, aged perhaps thirty, with a small dark face and a lean, compact figure. Mel remembered him in his wetsuit. She could imagine him