The Garden of Forgotten Wishes - Trisha Ashley Page 0,28
I really wanted to tell Myfy about Mum, but firmly quashed the impulse: it wouldn’t be a good idea to reveal the Vane connection when the family were so obviously disliked. Besides, I’d already had to divulge something from my past I’d rather have kept to myself, so this new life wasn’t proving to be quite the clean slate I’d hoped it would be.
‘Right, now we go up again,’ Myfy announced, heading away from the falls and up a rough-hewn flight of steps, which had another of the iron handrails, set into the rock and heavily painted against the damp air.
Eventually, we emerged onto a flattish area above the falls, with patches of bare rock showing through wiry grass. A drystone wall stopped the curious from plummeting over the edge, though it was more probably put there to protect sheep.
The path ended at a small turnstile set into a more substantial and taller wall and through it was a narrow, rutted farm track.
‘Isn’t this another Victorian turnstile, like the ones at the entrance? Did the early visitors come all the way up here?’
‘Quite a lot of them did, including many women – the long skirts didn’t seem to hinder them when they really wanted to do something. We won’t go through the turnstile now, because it’s one way only and we’d have to walk back down the road through the village. The track joins it near a small terrace of cottages called, appropriately, Angel Row.’
‘When I arrived in the café this morning there were some hikers who I think Charlie said were coming up this way and then on to Thorstane,’ I remembered. It was starting to feel like a very long time since I’d arrived!
‘Probably. They can pick up the back road to Thorstane just beyond Angel Row. Not that it’s much of a road, once you get out of the village,’ she added.
‘It did look tricky on the Ordnance Survey map. Zigzag and very steep.’
‘It is: hairpin bends, with deep ditches on one side and a drop on the other. It’s mainly used by farm and forestry vehicles – and hikers. It’s the shortest way to walk from Jericho’s End to Thorstane, if you have the stamina for it and it brings you out by St Gabriel’s, which is really our village church.’
‘Has there never been a church in Jericho’s End itself?’
‘I suppose the monks who tried to settle in the valley had some kind of chapel, but they moved on after only a couple of years. So no, not unless you count the Brethren, a strict religious sect who sometimes used to hold meetings in the Red Barn at Cross Ways Farm. They’ve now died out with the last generation, which is hardly surprising, since they seemed to combine a sort of Amish lack of comfort with a belief that salvation could only be gained by the extreme oppression of women.’
‘That doesn’t sound much fun,’ I said, though it did sound like the kind of family Mum came from.
‘The Strange Brethren, they called themselves, and the Vane family from Cross Ways Farm were in the thick of it, hellfire and brimstone, women the original sinners and the cause of every evil,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘That kind of sect.’
The Vane family were sounding ever more unattractive and I felt no desire now to confess I was related to them. Wayne had hardly seemed a sterling modern-day example, either.
‘The St Gabriel’s parishioners, unless they were from the top end of the village, tended to take the footpath that starts near the gates of Risings and skirts the edge of Brow Farm. Bier Way, it’s called.’
‘Beer way?’ I echoed, puzzled. ‘It goes to a pub?’
She gave her tilted smile. ‘No, bier.’ She spelled it out. ‘It’s because coffins were often carried up it to the church.’
‘Cheery.’
She considered this. ‘Perhaps not in winter, but in spring and summer, I think taking your last journey through the fields and meadows, carried by your friends and family, doesn’t sound too bad.’
‘No, you’re right,’ I agreed.
We retraced our steps down the path by the waterfall, catching glimpses of the viewing platform below as the path twisted and turned, so I could see why that poor tourist had found herself stuck here overnight.
All the same, I longed to come back there alone, with no possibility of anyone else about. When I asked Myfy, it seemed that I was welcome to walk there in my free time whenever I wished.