ONE

There was a tang of salt in the breeze that ruffled Anna Evesleigh’s long black hair. The same breeze rippled the water’s surface as the sea rolled inexorably on a rising midday tide into the creek that lay before her. The opposite bank rose in a gentle slope, covered in a tight pelt of weathered oaks, their leaves gold and bronze with autumn colour.

Anna Evesleigh must be watched. Her reputation was well known. Local people were mainly proud that an actress, one some of them had seen at the theatre, and even more had seen on television, should be part of their community. But her reputation covered more than that. She was a catalyst, she caused things to happen, she uncovered events long past, events that still affected people now. That could not be allowed to happen here. The storyteller paused before bringing this particular story to a happy end. But the storyteller knew that not all stories have a happy ending.

One

Anna put her mug down reluctantly. ‘That was fascinating,’ she said, brushing back her dark hair from her face. ‘You know so many local stories.’

‘Most of them too scandalous to be repeated in public.’ The voice made her turn round, a smile of welcome on her face as she saw the short stocky figure standing in the doorway of the mobile home.

‘Hello, Gareth,’ she said, as the collie beside her got to his feet, tail wagging furiously, and went eagerly towards the newcomer. ‘I expect you’ve heard it before.’

He nodded as he stroked the dog’s head, before pulling up a chair to join them around the low driftwood table, crowding the small sitting area. One of his hands gently pulled the dog’s ears as the collie laid his head in Gareth’s lap. His other hand rested on the arm of the chair. Both hands were clean, the dark hairs that covered their backs still damp from recent washing, but there were clots of clay in his hair and pale wet streaks on his thick fisherman’s jumper.

‘I’ve heard all Edward’s stories before,’ he agreed as he looked across at her, his voice deep and lilting, even though most of his native Welsh accent had faded from his words. ‘That’s how I know he’ll be sued for slander if he’s not careful. It isn’t right, telling stories that might still affect living people.’

Edward leaned forward, carefully picking out the clots of clay from his partner’s smooth grey-tinged hair, watched curiously by the collie. ‘I’m always careful who I tell them to,’ he said soothingly. ‘I’ve got lots that would be alright for the Women’s Institute.’

‘But you weren’t telling Anna one of those,’ Gareth replied. ‘Were you?’

‘No, of course not. Anna’s getting the best ones.’ Edward’s tone was light, amused.

But Anna intervened, knowing Gareth’s serious and rather sober character did not always appreciate the other man’s levity. ‘I’ve heard far worse already,’ she said, glancing back at Gareth. ‘This seems to be an area of born storytellers. I was at the last Storytelling at the village hall, and so many people wanted to tell tales that some of them didn’t get a turn.’

‘It’s still a tradition in some rural areas,’ Gareth said, allowing himself to be diverted. ‘Stories were told down the generations, and still are, a living history of the families that go back for centuries.’

‘Yes, exactly.’ Anna’s dark blue eyes lit up. ‘I’d like to get Lucy, or maybe Hugh, to record some of them. I’ll even do some recording myself if I can. Carefully selected stories,’ she added hastily, seeing Gareth frown. ‘I’d like to keep an archive of them in the garden.’

‘And,’ Edward said, with a malicious shrewdness in his pale eyes, ‘they’ll make fantastic plays.’

Anna gurgled with laughter. She nodded. ‘Of course. Community plays are now a big part of my repertoire.’

‘So I’ve heard,’ Edward said. ‘You’re getting quite a reputation as a writer and producer. I’ll have to take Gareth to see your Rossington play this year.’

Gareth groaned with real feeling. ‘You go. It’s not my scene.’

‘But you’d like to see the manor house where Lucy and Hugh live,’ Edward tempted. ‘It’s a real Elizabethan place.’

‘They don’t,’ Anna said quickly. ‘Lucy and Hugh. Live there, that is. It was Lucy’s childhood home, but it belongs to her brother Will now. Lucy and Hugh live in an old farmhouse, roughly between the manor and here.’

‘It doesn’t seem to me,’ Edward said sweetly, the malice evident in his voice now, ‘that Hugh does much living there. Dear Lucy isn’t often there either. Even her dog,’ he nodded towards the collie, ‘seems to live with you these days.’

Anna recognised the curiosity that lay behind the comment and chose her words with care. ‘Lucy is just finishing a big project in South America for the Seed Bank, but after that she’ll be working for them part-time on smaller jobs, which will mean less time away from home. Then she’ll be spending more time at Elowen, in the garden. She’s done a lot of work on the apprentice scheme, and on the young offenders’ resettlement scheme. Now she’s got to bring it all together ready for the autumn when she hopes to have them both running full time.’

‘But I suppose Hugh will still be in the States,’ Edward persisted. ‘He does seem to like it so much.’

‘He’s been very tied up there since his publishing company was bought by the American publishers, but he’ll be back for the official opening of the garden,’ Anna said. Really, she thought, I can’t explain Hugh’s actions; I’m not sure he knows himself what he wants to do. And will he be back for the opening?

She blocked the thought, glancing at her watch, and exclaimed in surprise, ‘Heavens, it’ll be dark soon. I’d better get going, I’m supposed to be meeting Mike at Soldiers’ Meadow.’ She stood up with easy grace and reached for her cape as the collie came to join her. Her shapely figure was already well-concealed by the heavy scarlet jumper she wore over her black woollen trousers, but she expertly wrapped the vividly patterned cape around her body, cocooning herself against the early spring chill outside. She leaned down to kiss Edward on the cheek, but when she turned to Gareth he fended her off with an upraised arm.

‘I’m probably still covered in clay,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Anyway, I’ll walk up to the meadow with you. I’d like to see how Mike is getting on.’

He glanced down at his partner, who sprawled comfortably across the sofa beside the stove that made the small sitting area cosily warm. ‘I don’t suppose you want to come too.’ It was a statement, not a question.

‘Definitely not.’ Edward shuddered, closing his eyes in horror. ‘It’s wet out there, and cold. You have a good time,’ he finished encouragingly. ‘I’ll be here when you get back.’

Gareth grunted, and followed Anna to the door.

It was only three o’clock, but it was already gloomy under an overcast sky, and the mid-March afternoon was heading towards the dimness of dusk. The fading light did nothing to disguise the derelict farmyard where the mobile home stood.

The farmhouse that had been on one side of the yard had only been a single storey building, a post-war concrete-block rebuilding of the original house. Most of this later construction had crumbled, leaving uneven walls at about head height. The yard still retained its original barns, stables, and dairy, old, Anna knew, but how old she would need Mike to tell her. Or Hugh, if he ever came back. Plants sprouted from the granite walls, doors hung crookedly from their hinges, slates had fallen, shattering into sharp-edged shards as they hit the ground, leaving gaping holes in the roofs.

She hated to think what the interiors would be like. Damp at the very least, probably hosting a community of rats. Possibly even foxes came here to shelter from the weather. Neither Edward nor Gareth were likely to mind their presence. And Ben, the collie, was happily sniffing around, enjoying the scents.

Anna followed a track trodden through the greenery that flourished in the yard, picking her way with care over the cobbled surface that was barely visible under a thick covering of weeds and grass. They had benefited from the wet winter, making the track dangerously slippery underfoot so she was relieved to reach the gateway, where a couple of wooden bars dangled precariously, the only remnants of the gate that had once hung there.

She had passed another track through the emerging cow parsley and hogweed in the yard, leading to what Anna knew to be the old dairy that Gareth had skilfully restored to use as his pottery. This was a narrower track, no doubt because Gareth did not encourage visitors when he was working, not even Edward. The esoteric shapes Gareth created there were sold through various galleries, and he had no contact with the buyers, which suited him well. He could rarely be persuaded away from this isolated spot, except to wander the cliffs, gaining inspiration, Anna supposed, for his creations.

Gareth had not spoken by the time they emerged from the yard. They paused to look at the grassy slope ahead, where a path led past a network of small fields to the cliff path and up to the meadow where Mike was checking the site of the community dig he had recently received funding for. Ben had been ranging ahead, and he stopped too, looking back at them, resigned to human dithering on walks. A light misty haze was already drifting across the ground, likely to settle damply over the buildings during the night.

As they set off along the path, Gareth broke the silence. ‘He can’t help himself, he just wants to know about everyone,’ he said roughly. ‘He’s intensely curious, and some people just like to gossip, so he encourages them very skilfully. He’s had a lot of practice.’

Anna had been thinking of Mike and brought her mind back to Gareth’s words with an effort. Of course, he was talking about Edward, she realised.

‘He does know a lot about the area,’ Anna said. ‘And he isn’t even local. Neither are you, but you both seem to have fitted in very well.’

‘Edward is a Londoner at heart, but he came here for his holidays every year as a child. He knows the area and the people as well as any local, and loves it well enough to have the urge to live here. Says it inspires his muse. So here we are,’ Gareth said, only a faint hint of irony in his tone. ‘Me, I’m definitely a Tenby lad. My father’s family were fishermen from way back. Not much future in that, of course, but I still feel at home by the sea. I even get out in a boat here now and again, to do some line fishing.’

He paused, turning to look back at the farmyard below. The buildings were now a darker grey than the descending dusk. Only a faint glimmer of white showed where the mobile home stood behind a sheltering stack of rotting straw bales, and a shaft of light shone from the window by the little sitting area, where Edward was no doubt dozing on his sofa.

‘One day,’ Gareth said quietly, almost to himself, hand resting absentmindedly on the collie’s head as Ben came back to stand between them, ‘I’d like to restore this place and build another house here. Although sometimes I wonder if it would just be better to move.’

‘You shouldn’t move, build your house instead,’ Anna said. ‘This is a superb setting. Sheltered from the sea, but close enough to walk there in a few minutes.’

Gareth’s teeth gleamed in a sudden smile. ‘A bit more than a few minutes. Come on, or Mike will be storming down here looking for you.’ As they resumed their walk, shortly joining the cliff path which twisted more steeply upwards, Ben bounding ahead, Gareth went on, ‘I’m surprised he can do any work yet. Isn’t the ground too wet?’

Anna gurgled with laughter. ‘Of course it is. He can’t really do much yet. But you know Mike, he can’t wait to get started. He got Tony Zennor to take off the turf over the excavation area and he’s up there whenever he can, opening the trial trenches. He says the water runs off well, so the ground drains quickly.

‘Lucy had a quick look at the meadow last autumn to check the plant life, when we knew Mike’s new company might get the funding for a trial dig. She’s sure that there’s nothing rare there, the ground has been ploughed too often in the past.’

Gareth nodded. ‘Yes, Edward loves telling the story of how a body was turned up once, about a hundred years ago, when a farmer was “tilling the soil”.’ He corrected himself, ‘At least, a skeleton, or some of its bones. One of those poor damned soldiers.’ ‘He told me about it,’ Anna said, her breath coming a little harder as they approached the top of the slope. ‘But it’s mainly been bits of metal and a few pistols that get uncovered, hasn’t it?’

Gareth shrugged. ‘That’s what I’ve heard. Probably a few coins too. Though I’m never sure about the truth of these old stories. They change fractionally with every telling. And I’ve never actually seen a pistol that looks of the right period.’ He glanced across at her ruefully. ‘And I’m not even sure what the right period is. Some say the ship that was wrecked was from the Napoleonic wars. But I’ve heard other people swear it was older, a Spanish ship from the Armada fleet, naturally carrying a huge cargo of gold bars. Although why a warship would be loaded down with them I have yet to work out.’

Now read on…