Chapter Eighteen #2
He accepts the plate from her, but five minutes later, he also helps himself to a couple of sausages, and a little later asks for a bigger helping and pours gravy over the lot.
I watch him to see if he’s upset his girlfriend is clearly coming on to Osian. He doesn’t seem to look at them. In fact, he absolutely doesn’t look at that end of the table, not once. He’s better than me because my eyes keep going there.
Nora toys with her food, then asks loud enough for many of us to hear: “Any chance of something different?”
Haneen’s smile drops, but quickly she says, “Sure, what would you like?”
“Anything that’s healthy and won’t give us high cholesterol.”
And just like that, Nora goes to the top of my shit list.
“Ungrateful cow,” hisses Shirley, the lady with red hair beside me. “Why doesn’t she eat in her room?”
Leonie, too, looks upset. “I know how hard it is to prepare a meal for so many people and Haneen is the nicest, most generous woman in the world.”
To distract them, I lean forward and ask, “Can you help me? There’s someone I want to talk to. Alexander, the mosaics expert. Evan did introduce us but that was a couple of weeks ago and at the time there’d been a lot of new faces and names.”
“Oh, Alex. Yes.” Leonie brightens and scans up and down the table. “He’s there, sitting next to Gethin.” Then she sees my baffled expression. “Gethin is the guy in the wheelchair with the risqué jokes.”
When I look where she’s pointing, no baseball cap. “Which one is Alex?”
“In the forest-green waistcoat.”
Alex is a tall man in a grandad shirt and waistcoat. He wears a string necklace with a painted cross just visible through his collar. His hair is tied back with a dark elastic band.
“He cleans up well, doesn’t he?” Leonie winks.
“Cleans up? He’s unrecognisable!” I say.
Unfortunately, he’s at the far end so when we’ve finished our meal, I get up and go to find him.
People break into smaller groups, chatting, coffee cups in hand.
It takes me a minute to cross the room because a couple of people stop me for a more personal welcome. So it’s Alex who comes looking for me.
“Hi, Evie.” He shakes my hand. “I’ve been studying that wall you uncovered on the terrace.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
He pulls a couple of chairs aside and we sit. A minute later, Evan himself joins us.
“What can you tell me about the mosaics in this house?” I ask him once the small talk is out of the way. “I can’t help the feeling that mosaic writing on the blue wall was something more than decorative.”
“I’m glad someone agrees with me.” Alex beams. “I think a mosaic artist who must have lived here used this art to hide important messages.”
“Hide?” Evan asks. “You didn’t say hide when we talked about this last week. That poem seems straightforward enough.” He points towards the front door where a long line of text is just visible in the mosaic border above.
Alex glances over his shoulder. “I broke my heart in five pieces? Yeah, that’s just a quote.
” He turns back to us. “But don’t forget, that was done much later.
Idris Davis wasn’t even born when some of the other mosaics were done.
And the technique is much more modern.” Alex absentmindedly plays with the painted cross at his throat.
“I’d say it was done to carry on the practice of celebrating Welsh poetry.
But the older stuff, like that one on Evie’s blue wall”—he fixes me with a speculative look—“that wasn’t even Welsh, it was just Keats.
And the end isn’t even him. What are the five colours of hope? ”
“I’ve been asking the same question.”
“You make it sound mysterious, maybe even ominous,” Evan says.
“I don’t agree. Kendric House was very much at the heart of the Romantic and then Arts and Crafts movements.
It played host to many artists of the time and gave them a free hand in building or designing things here.
It’s why none of the wings in the house look alike, and why none of the gardens look the same.
Some of them might have been friends with Keats and who’s to say that last line about the five colours wasn’t just an early draft of the poem before John Keats edited it and cut those words? ”
Alex shakes his head. “There are a number of mysteries here. Take the Blue Lady. She pops up in the least likely places.”
The Blue Lady? “There is a stained-glass panel above my front door with a lady in blue,” I start.
“Exactly. But she only seems to appear in rooms facing North Park. Everything tells me—” Alex pauses and beckons someone over “—the professor thinks the same. They used the decorative features like mosaics, stained glass and murals to express things about the house, and perhaps the families who lived here. Some of them are quite cryptic. I haven’t seen them all yet and most need a lot of cleaning before they can be made out. ”
“Cryptic? Why?”
Alex’s expression remains thoughtful, and perhaps he’s thinking what I’m thinking.
“I agree,” the man Alex waved over says, pulling over a chair to sit beside me.
“To my mind, this is only one question in a larger mystery. It’s like a chain of clues that snakes around the entire house.
Or at least I thought it was the house, but seeing your wall makes me think it includes the gardens too.
Someone did this; there’s a method to it. ”
“And you think…?” The question comes from one of the old men who has also joined us.
“Who knows?” the professor says. “Might be a family secret.”
Alex rises to give the older man his seat and finds another for himself.
The professor asks me, “What do you think?”
All eyes turn to me, which is far more intimidating than cameras and production crew.
These people really care what I think. Trying not to blush, I say, “My own suspicion is the blue wall is just like a treasure hunt. I’d say some of these mosaics lead you to a feature in the house or the garden.
Unless it’s a…” How can I explain? “The thing about gardens is that things were designed for a practical reason. But here there are features I can’t understand. ”
“Such as?” Evan prompts.
“Nowadays we have this modern symbolism. The kind of thing you see a lot at the Chelsea Flower Show. Statements about modern life, an homage to books or films or even a famous person. But a hundred years ago, gardens were just gardens. They were created to be beautiful or useful. So…” I pull back from talking too much theory.
“So last week, I found these slate borders, the kind that normally edge a flowerbed. Except that there are too many of them and too close together. If they’re flowerbeds, why are they too narrow?
They’re in groups of seven. They all begin from a curve and radiate out as if the flowerbeds start narrow and widen slightly. ”
“Like the wheel of a bicycle?” Haneen asks. She must have drifted over unobserved. Evan’s partner is a very gentle, unobtrusive creature.
“Sort of,” I answer. “But only a quarter of a wheel. Like I said – only seven lines. And a little distance away there are more but they’re pointing in another direction. I can’t see why, but it feels like they were drawing a shape.”
Osian should join this discussion. I turn to find him but he’s engrossed talking to Nora still. Or at least she’s talking to him. She smiles and twinkles as if sure of his admiration.
A chair somewhere scrapes on the tiled floor.
Llewellyn gets up from the table, lips pressed into a thin line, and stalks upstairs. Osian notices but then Nora lays a hand on his arm and whispers something that draws his attention back to her.
I turn back to my group, a million thoughts in my head. It takes a huge effort to focus on Alex and the others around me.
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Alex says, on the edge of his seat.
“If I’m not wrong, they make a shape for a reason.
” He moves his hands around each other as if trying to make a shape.
“Look at this, we just uncovered it yesterday.” He glances up towards the mural nearest us.
A painting of a woman in a bridal gown standing in the hollow of a large tree with thick leafy branches like a crown.
“We thought it was just a forest until we cleaned up all the residue and saw the bride. And see in the background, there’s a man on a horse. Don’t you think he looks sad?”
There’s a silence, eventually broken by the professor. “Rhys and Meinir,” he whispers, eyes going wide.
We all look at him.
“None of you are Welsh, are you?” he says. “Rhys and Meinir is an old and very sad legend.” He turns to Alex. “But you were saying?”
Haneen holds a hand up to stop Alex talking. “You’re not going to leave us hanging. What sad legend?”
“I will tell you in a minute but we don’t want Alex to lose his train of thought.”
Alex gets up and walks to the alcove.
I start to get up. I’m going to bring Osian over. This is starting to get more interesting and he should hear it.
He seems engrossed by Nora in her skimpy top; she still has her hand on his arm and is talking eagerly. He is sitting straight but has one ankle on the opposite knee and both hands on his shin. I’ve seen this move before on other men.
I know it, and I know what it’s meant to hide.
Just then he looks up. Our eyes meet, and his face colours.
I turn away quickly.
“You see,” Alex is saying. “Beneath the mural there’s a ledge with a decorative pattern in mosaics. Two shades of green, dark and pale. And it, too is a line of something.” He waits to make sure we’re all listening, then reads aloud. “She dwelt among the untrodden ways. Beside the darling springs.”
It means little to me and by the blank looks on the faces of the others, even less to them.
“It sounds like poetry. I’ll have to look it up.” He nods to the professor. “And I think we both have to compare notes with that legend you mentioned.”
“Good idea, but”—Evan rises to his feet—“this is something to include in a presentation to the entire group. Everyone in the house needs to know this.”
Although he always acts like our equal, there’s something about Evan, a sense of command, that makes me see him as our boss. At least my boss. He walks away and most of the others drift away.
Alex and I agree to walk around the garden tomorrow to see if he can spot anything I missed.
When we settle this, I look around; both Osian and Nora have gone.