The Garden of Forgotten Wishes - Trisha Ashley Page 0,158
You’ll have to manage with the staff one, till it’s done.’
‘At least it’s a fairly quietish time to do it,’ agreed Ned, and we left them to get on with it.
‘There’s nothing quite as romantic as a nice chat about sanitation, is there?’ I said brightly as we walked towards the bridge – we were having lunch in the Devil’s Cauldron restaurant.
‘You’re the one who was so keen on discussing the loo situation in the first place,’ he pointed out. ‘Look at it this way – I’m giving you everything you ever asked me for.’
We decided to walk off our very good lunch and Ned suggested we go up the track by the Village Hut and along the top of the hill above the woods, to the path back down to the falls.
‘We can take in Jacob’s barn on the way. You haven’t seen it yet and even if he’s out, there’s lots to look at outside.’
This proved to be an understatement, for strange kinetic sculptures were everywhere: driven by the breeze, or the power of a nearby stream. Some of them made faint, melodic noises, or whirred, chimed and fluttered.
‘Jacob’s a magician,’ I said. ‘I suspected as much.’
There was no sign of him, so we decided not to knock on the door in case we disturbed his work, and carried on up the steep, rough path till we came out above the woods.
It was fairly level going after that and eventually we reached the road that led to Angel Row, then turned off and made our way down the side of the falls.
‘It’s good to have the place to ourselves – no tourists today,’ Ned said, as we stopped on the flat viewing area by the source of the river. ‘Marnie, I—’
But I’d caught sight of something over his shoulder and alerted by my fixed, astonished stare, he turned suddenly and exclaimed, ‘Wayne!’
It was that familiar carroty head I’d caught sight of, emerging from the cave by the waterfall, which was more exposed than usual, because the weather had been so dry for ages. Only now did I notice a brown rope hanging down from the top. Wayne had grabbed it and was using it to help pull himself out onto what was left of the ledge underneath.
This was a mistake: it unravelled in an instant and I had one brief impression of Wayne, poised with a ragged stump of rope in one hand, before he plummeted backwards towards the pool way below.
‘Oh God,’ said Ned, leaning over the rail to try to catch sight of him. ‘If he’s hit the rocks on the way down … No, he’s just bobbed up again, but the current’s got him! Come on.’
He grabbed my hand and we scrambled down as quickly as we could, then ran along the riverbank, trying to spot him.
We’d gone quite a way before we found him, washed by an eddy into a backwater half-enclosed by rocks, floating face down.
Ned pulled him out and turned him over. ‘You see if you can get hold of Elf while I try a bit of artificial respiration,’ he said, and began working on the unconscious Wayne.
I managed to get a signal on my phone by running a few yards downstream. Elf answered straight away.
‘Wayne’s had an accident. He was climbing out of that cave at the top of the waterfall and he fell in and was swept downstream,’ I told her. ‘We’ve got him out and …’
I paused and looked over my shoulder as various uncouth noises told me Ned had managed to get most of the water out of Wayne. ‘He’s not drowned – he’s just brought most of the water up.’
‘I’ll be right up to have a look at him. See you shortly.’
I waited where I was, till Wayne had finished retching and was sitting up against a rock, before I went back. Elf arrived only a few minutes later and she had James with her.
‘What have you been doing?’ asked Elf, looking down at Wayne like a bright-eyed sparrow eyeing a not very savoury worm.
‘He’d tied a rotten piece of rope to a rock up at the top of the falls and managed to get across that bit of ledge to the cave,’ explained Ned. ‘Then he put his weight on the rope when he was getting out and it gave way – and down he went.’
‘That bloody book going on about treasure!’ Wayne spat, looking accusingly at Elf. ‘There was nothing in that cave!’