The Garden of Forgotten Wishes - Trisha Ashley Page 0,88
crumbs to share.
When I’d finished the coffee I spotted the edge of a fallen metal name tag in the middle bed and retrieved it, brushing off the layer of leaf mould. ‘The Apple Rose’, it said, which wasn’t a name I’d heard of, but it was certainly flourishing.
Then, as I began to turn back, I saw out of the corner of my eye a long-fingered, freckled hand reach through the railings and grasp the handle of the rake I’d leaned against the wall. With a certain fascination, I watched it slowly withdraw, pulling the rake with it, then stop when it finally occurred to the owner of the hand, as it already had to me, that the rake head would not fit between the rails.
A head bobbed up, the face with its slightly weaselly features familiar under a khaki forage cap, from which wisps of bright orange-red hair stuck out. I saw the shallow, pale blue eyes spot me and widen … and then, very, very slowly, the rake slid back down again.
Wayne brazened it out. ‘Morning! Hard at it already?’
‘Yes,’ I said shortly. ‘Did you want something?’ Other than my rake, I added silently.
‘No, just passing. I’ve been finishing a job off for the farm up the track by the Village Hut. Anyway,’ he added cockily, ‘it’s a free country, ain’t it?’
Wayne obviously considered everything in it to be free to him, that was for sure.
‘How you getting on? Saw you and old Ned being chummy in the pub the other night, so he’s probably going easy on you for now. But you watch your step. He’s got previous form for dumping his women when he’s had enough of them.’
I felt a flame of anger. ‘I’m not interested in old gossip, I’m just here to do the gardening – and all those stupid stories about Ned were disproved. I’d advise you not to go spreading slander about him, or you might find yourself in trouble.’
‘There’s no need to get all uppity, when I was just dropping a hint in case you had any idea he meant something serious, like,’ he said, digging himself further into his unsavoury little hole.
‘Well, I haven’t! Ned is just my employer – or one of them, because I’m working for Elf and Myfy too. Excuse me,’ I added brusquely, ‘I want to get on with my work.’
I removed the rake from his reach, but he said quickly, in the ingratiating tone I’d heard him use to Ned earlier that day, ‘No offence meant – and no rush to get on, is there? I’m interested in what you’re doing with the garden. We’re in the same line of business, aren’t we?’
‘After a fashion,’ I agreed. ‘You’re a handyman too, though, aren’t you?’
‘Gardening, mostly, but I’ll turn my hand to anything for a bit of cash. It beats working with Dad and our Sam on the pig farm, that’s for sure.’
‘I’ve heard you have an organic pig farm,’ I said, interested despite myself. ‘Is Sam your brother?’
‘Yeah, eldest. And the Vanes are noted for our pork,’ he agreed. ‘Dad works the farm with our Sam, but I had other ideas, didn’t I?’
Getting no response to this he added, on a note of disgust, ‘Pigs!’ But whether this was meant for his family or the animals, I’d no idea.
‘There’s a few mentions of your family in a book about local history I bought the other day,’ I said on impulse. ‘They were members of a strict religious sect, weren’t they?’
‘Yeah, Strange Brethren, and our Dad’s still pretty strange, if you ask me – him and some of his friends. All that old “hell and damnation” mumbo jumbo’s pretty much died out, and a good thing, too.’
I thought he was right about that one.
‘They even christened me Esau,’ he said in an aggrieved voice, as if it was a personal insult, ‘but I wasn’t having that. Christened myself Wayne later, and no dunking in cold water to do it.’
For a second time, I thought Esau had an unusual distinction that the name Wayne lacked. But then, Wayne himself didn’t have any unusual distinction.
‘Someone already told me my family was in that book the old Price-Jones bat with the funny-coloured hair wrote.’
‘Nature seems to have given you funny-coloured hair, too,’ I said, for the wisps escaping from under his hat were so orange they almost fluoresced.
He frowned, puzzled, then said, ‘Mine’s natural, not dyed.’ Then he gave me a closer scrutiny, as if really seeing me for the first