The Sea Garden Read online

  Epigraph

  There comes a murmur from the shore,

  And in the place two fair streams are,

  Drawn from the purple hills afar,

  Drawn down unto the restless sea.

  The hills whose flowers ne’er fed the bee,

  The shore no ship has ever seen,

  Still beaten by the billows green,

  Whose murmur comes unceasingly

  Unto the place for which I cry.

  —WILLIAM MORRIS, A Garden by the Sea

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Book I: The Sea Garden

  1 - The Crossing

  2 - The Domaine

  3 - The Lighthouse

  4 - The Restoration

  5 - The Historian

  6 - The Flight

  Book II: The Lavender Field

  1 - Provence

  2 - Wild Violet

  3 - Almond Blossom

  4 - Thyme and Fig

  5 - Citrus and Pine

  6 - Lavender

  7 - Orange Peel and Musk

  Book III: A Shadow Life

  1 - Orchard Court

  2 - The Making of an Agent

  3 - Tangmere

  4 - Xavier

  5 - Bignor Manor

  6 - Messages

  7 - What Was Left

  8 - Never Give Up

  9 - Almost Happy

  10 - Vapour Trail

  11 - Le Train Bleu

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Deborah Lawrenson

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Book I

  The Sea Garden

  1

  The Crossing

  Sunday, June 2, 2013

  The island lay in wait, a smudge of land across the water.

  From the port at La Tour Fondue, the crossing to Porquerolles would take only fifteen minutes.

  Ellie Brooke put her face up to the sun, absorbing the heat. On the deck of the ferry, where she had a prime seat, there were few other passengers this late in the afternoon.

  The young man had his back to the curve of the deck rail, facing her. It was his T-shirt that drew her attention: the lead singer of a heavy metal band thrust a tongue out from the boy’s chest, an image that invited reaction but succeeded only in making its thin, blond bearer appear innocuous in comparison.

  The engines thrummed and the boat nosed out into sea glitter and salt spray, then powered up to full speed. The island was already sharpening into focus when the young man climbed over the deck rail, spread both arms, and then let himself slip down the side of the ferry, a silent movement so quick and so unexpected that Ellie was not the only passenger to admit that she had at first doubted her own eyes. No splash was heard in the churning water close to the hull.

  Perhaps their shouts to the crew were seconds too late, the choking of the ferry’s engine not fast enough. The young man had gone over the edge too close to the bow to have had any chance of swimming away safely. As soon as he hit the water he would have been sucked under and pulled towards the propellers, it was said later.

  In the moments immediately afterwards, though, in the calm as the engine noise died and the ferry drifted, it seemed quite possible that he would be fished out spluttering, shrinking with embarrassment at the gangling weakness of his limbs, the idiocy of his stunt. Someone threw a life belt.

  On deck, more passengers emerged from the cabin to lean over the rail, asking why the ferry had stopped. They were drawn to one another, wanting to help but frightened of getting in the way as the crew set about a rescue procedure.

  Ellie did not speak French well enough to understand much of what they were saying, but it was clear that the middle-aged couple with a small yappy dog, the man carrying a briefcase, and the elderly woman were united in their furious incomprehension of the young man’s actions. The man with the briefcase was particularly vocal, and his tirade sounded like condemnation. A man in a panama hat and loose white shirt hung slightly back, making no comment.

  “Did you see what happened?” she asked him in English, hoping he would understand.

  “Yes.”

  “One moment he was fine. It didn’t look as if anything was wrong. The next he was gone.”

  “It’s terrible.”

  “Was it an accident, or—”

  “He climbed over.”

  There were shouts from the water, but they were not cries for help.

  “Don’t look,” said the man.

  She turned away. Bright sunlit sails slid across the sapphire sea. A small aircraft cut across the sky.

  Waves slapped against the portside of the ferry. A dinghy was quickly joined by a police launch. Shouting cut through the buzz of the crew’s electronic communications. Falling cadences of conversation on deck marked the transition from irritation with the delay to understanding. The fear felt by all was primitive: the oldest sea story of all, the soul lost overboard.

  A hundred years ago the ferry boat had been summoned to the mainland by smoke signal—the fire of resinous leaves and twigs lit in a brazier outside the café at the end of the Presqu’île de Giens, she remembered. It was the kind of detail she enjoyed, culled from the reading she had done in preparation for the trip. Now, within minutes, invisible modern signals brought the emergency services.

  Ellie stood up and went over to the rail. Not for the first time, she wondered why she had come.

  As it was, her arrival on the island was bound up with more immediate questions from the harbourmaster and two male police officers who boarded the ferry when it docked. Her first impressions of Porquerolles’ fabled beauty were shot through with shock and a sense of waste. Oleanders and palms waved a subtropical greeting from the quayside, while the passengers were asked to give their names and contact details and to make statements before disembarkation. What had she noticed about the young man? Had he spoken to anyone? Had he seemed agitated, nervous? It seemed trite to reply that she had paid more attention to the vulgarity of his T-shirt than to the person wearing it.

  She showed Lieutenant Franck Meunier where she had been sitting on deck, and approximately where he had been standing.

  “Did he shout as he fell?” The police officer was all sharp eyes, buzz-cut hair, and controlled strength. Not as young, close up, as he seemed when he came aboard. His English was good, though heavily accented.

  “No. At least, I didn’t hear him say anything.”

  “Was he sweating, perhaps—had he taken drugs? Did you see his eyes?”

  “I wasn’t close enough to see. I don’t know.”

  The white and steel needles of the marina extended out to the ferry dock. A warm breeze rang with clinks of metal rigging. This shore felt far more foreign than the one they had left, as if the sea voyage had crossed much more than the few miles of the strait.

  “Where are you staying on the island?”

  “A hotel on the Place d’Armes.”

  “Which one?”

  She pulled a piece of paper out of her shoulder bag and handed it over, uncertain of the pronunciation.

  “L’Oustaou des Palmiers,” read the officer.

  She nodded.

  “You are on vacation?”

  “No. Business.”

  He frowned, rubbing at his crew cut. His head looked newly shorn. “What business?”

  “I am a garden designer. I’m coming here to look at a garden tomorrow and meet a prospective client.”

  Had she been less driven to prove herself, she might have turned the job down months before, on the grounds of impracticability. Any number of garden designers and landscape architects were b
etter qualified to take on the restoration of a garden on a Mediterranean island; someone who—unlike her—already knew the terrain and was experienced in the dry heat, rocky soil, and exoticism of the Riviera would have been the obvious choice. But spring in England had been dismal, a fleeting glimmer of sun in March and gone by April; the subsequent weeks of grey skies and rain had been unbearable. It was the simplest of urges that had brought her this far, on the journey up to London and beyond, the flight to Hyères: the need for heat and the light. Of course she was curious about the job too, and lured by the flattering terms of the invitation.

  “Who is this client?”

  “Laurent de Fayols. At the Domaine de Fayols.”

  Lieutenant Meunier considered this, then flipped back through his notes. “When did you first see the man go to the deck rail?”

  For what seemed like hours, pinned down on the motionless ferry, Ellie gave answers that could offer nothing in the way of insight and could save no one. From the dock she could see pale beaches and low, verdant hills berried with red roofs. The fort above the harbour punched up a fist of stone through green trees. The sun was dazzling.

  Finally she was allowed to go. She wiped a hand over her forehead and consulted the information and a map outside the tourist office on the quai. “Average temperature for June, 20 degrees Celsius,” she read. It was only the beginning of June, and almost seven o’clock in the evening, yet it felt hotter. She set off wearily towards the Place d’Armes. The wheels of her travel bag, weighted by a laptop, a box file of sketches, and photocopied material from old books, scraped along behind her.

  It was a wide, dusty square dominated by a church with a distinctly Spanish look. Three sides were edged with eucalyptus and the canopies of restaurants and shops. She made her way round, moving slowly from pool to pool of harsh light and shadow towards what looked like a hotel at the far end. It was not the Oustaou des Palmiers. Nor were any of the other establishments—the apartment entrances or art galleries, the souvenir shops, or the bar that looked as if it would be crowded later, outside of which a jazz guitarist now practiced. She walked on past fruit stalls stacked with watermelons, apples, strawberries, bananas, pineapples, until she was back almost where she started. It was only then that she saw she had missed the hotel by a few metres when she arrived at the square. The sign was hidden under a red canopy and succulent green creepers that shaded tables laid outside for dinner.

  Inside, the reception desk was a cramped counter under the stairs.

  “I’m Jean-Luc,” said a young man who looked like a student dressed for the beach, shirt hanging open to expose a smooth, bare chest. He handed over the keys without consulting any paperwork. “Anything you need, you can come and find me.”

  Mercifully he asked nothing about her journey.

  “And there is a message for you,” said Jean-Luc. He smiled and looked around vaguely in the small space behind the desk, as if he knew he had put it somewhere. “Ah!” He seized on an envelope and handed it over.

  “Thank you.”

  “I will take you up.”

  He picked up her bag as if it contained only air, bounded upstairs.

  The room was better than she’d imagined, with simple decor and a harbour view. Jean-Luc bounced across the room—he walked in that elastic way of the young and very fit—to show her the air-conditioning control and compact bathroom. When he’d gone, she threw open the windows and stood for a while, trying to reconcile what had just happened with the pleasure boats swaying at anchor and, beyond, the sea of scudding white sails. Slipping her shoes off, she padded across bare polished floorboards.

  She looked around for the envelope she’d been given and found it on the dressing table. Her name was written in ink, the hand bold yet elegant. It was a long time since she’d received a message written in fountain pen. Or any handwritten message. It all added to the feeling that she had stepped back in time on this island. She slid out the card. Her hands were still trembling slightly.

  I am very glad you have arrived safely,” she read. “I look forward to seeing you at the Domaine de Fayols tomorrow morning. I will send transport for you at ten o’clock. Enjoy your first evening on our lovely island.

  “Cordialement, Laurent de Fayols.”

  What had made him do it, the boy in the T-shirt—what disturbance in the mind, or sickness, or terrible event had induced him to go over the edge, and so quietly? Had he intended to kill himself, or only to attract attention?

  There could be no comfort in solitary thoughts in a single hotel room. She put her camera into her shoulder bag and headed outside. A rough concrete road led away from the main square and crumbled into dust that sifted into her open shoes as she walked through pines and Mexican cypress tall enough to deaden any sounds.

  Even in her darkest moments she had never considered suicide. Not even in the agonizing weeks after Dan died, when she was struggling to process the loss. Her business was life: the nurturing of plants and the innate optimism involved in planning gardens that would not grow to meet her vision for years, decades even. It had been hard, but she had turned her grief into determination. Self-reliance, too. She had simply worked harder, investing in life. But perhaps other people could find neither the strength nor their own versions of her beech avenues and sculpted borders to watch over.

  Where the path split, the beach was signposted: Plage d’Argent. The scent of pines, intensified by a dense heat, mingled with the unmistakably salty tang of the shore. Dan would have loved it: Porquerolles, the island of the ten forts. As a dedicated army man, he had been fascinated by any kind of military history. A tear escaped. He’s gone, Ellie told herself for the thousandth time. Let him go. She had to let herself go too, push herself out into the unknown.

  The sea nibbled at bone-white sand. She stood alone, lost in thought, where shallow ripples nudged shells into lace patterns across the beach.

  2

  The Domaine

  Monday, June 3

  In the morning sun, the Place d’Armes was an empty white expanse. Activity was confined to the shops and cafés under the trees. Ellie bought a guidebook and a large-scale map from the nearest tabac and sat on a low wall in the shade to open out the map. When she couldn’t locate the Domaine de Fayols immediately, an unwarranted spike of panic rose. But there it was, marked on the southern rim of the island, close to a cove and a lighthouse. Until then she’d had only the word of Laurent de Fayols that the place would exist when she arrived.

  By ten o’clock she was waiting outside the hotel. No cars were permitted on the island, and most people who passed were on bicycles: dented, clicking, cumbersome machines of uncertain vintage, used by countless people on countless holidays. The only alternative was a horse-drawn cart. Ellie watched as the driver jumped down and ran inside the hotel. Minutes later he came out with Jean-Luc, who waved her over.

  “This will transport you to the Domaine de Fayols.”

  The driver pulled her up into the seat next to him, his work-callused hand rough against hers as they touched, then he tutted and murmured to the elderly black horse, brushing its flank gently with the whip. They set off, swaying high above the road. The wheels winnowed up puffs of dust that trailed the cart as it jolted along the track. Ellie clutched her bag and folders tightly.

  Neither of them spoke. The driver kept his eyes ahead. Scrubby evergreen bushes released a strong scent of resin and honey; forests of pine gave way to gentle south-facing vineyards disturbed only by the ululation of early summer cicadas. Sitting up tall on the seat, she craned around eagerly to see what plants thrived naturally.

  It was a wild and romantic place, Laurent de Fayols had written, the whole island once bought as a wedding gift to his wife by a man who had made his fortune in the silver mines of Mexico. One of three small specks in the Mediterranean known as the Golden Isles, after the oranges, lemons, and grapefruit that glowed like lamps in their citrus groves.

  There were few reference works in English that offered
information beyond superficial facts about the island, and those she had managed to find were old. The best had been published in 1880, by a journalist called Adolphe Smith. Ellie had been struck by the loveliness of his “description of the most Southern Point of the French Riviera”:

  The island is divided into seven ranges of small hills, and in the numerous valleys thus created are walks sheltered from every wind, where the umbrella pines throw their deep shade over the path and mingle their balsamic odour with the scent of the thyme, myrtle and the tamarisk.

  She inhaled deeply.

  They turned off the track and up a drive spiked by Italian cypress. Soon the driveway opened onto a turning circle in front of the house. Inside the circle, in front of the house, stood a venerable olive tree surrounded by a bed of lavender. On either side of the house, towering pines, eucalyptus, and more cypresses stood guard.

  “Ici, la Domaine,” said the driver.

  “Merci.”

  Ellie accepted his chapped hand, and climbed down. The facade of the house was rendered in pale terra-cotta with butterfly blue shutters. It was a substantial property, three storeys high, under a traditional tile roof. Sculpted clouds of box hedge in galvanized planters lined the steps to the front door.

  She had hardly started to take it all in when her host emerged, advancing down the shallow stone steps with his hand extended. Laurent de Fayols must have been in his sixties, not particularly tall but slim and elegant, with deep brown eyes that she knew at once would be persuasive.

  “Come in, come in, my dear Miss Brooke—and welcome! At last you will be able to see for yourself what we’ve been speaking about.”

  There was no doubting his enthusiasm. His tanned face looked young behind designer sunglasses that he pushed onto the top of his head. Despite the heat, he had slung a jaunty yellow pullover across his shoulders.

  “I can’t wait.”

  He led her into the house, across a hallway, and through the centre of the house. A few moments of relative darkness, and they emerged on a wide terrace of pale stone. The sharpness of the sun made her blink, then her eyes adjusted to a glistening panorama of sky and sea framed by palms and parasol pines.