Garden of Stars: A gripping novel of hope, family and love across the ages. Rose Alexander

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СКАЧАТЬ help me with my research, tell me more of your memories? Get me started.”

      “Oh, I don’t remember much these days, my dear, as you know – not even who has just been at the door.” Inês gave a grim smile. “Time has taken its toll on my mind along with everything else.”

      She looked down at herself, at the loose skin and brown spots on the backs of her hands, seeming to be seeking confirmation, however reluctantly, of her own ageing. “But I’ll tell you what I can recall.”

      She looked towards her tall sash windows as if beyond them lay the expansive plains of the montado, filled with glades of ancient cork oaks, instead of the chilly acres of Hampstead Heath.

      “Stripping the cork bark from the trees is hard work, Sarah – skilled work – in the sweltering heat of summer. We always threw a huge party for the men – the tiradors – and their families, once every tree had been harvested. Music and dancing under the stars… They were wonderful times. There seemed to be so much more colour there, in Portugal, than there is here. Cowslips, purple heather, the blazing red of the strawberry tree fruits. Or maybe that’s just how I remember it.”

      “It sounds idyllic,” responded Sarah, wanting Inês to carry on painting the picture of her youth.

      “We spent our summers at the beach, all the cousins together, sometimes at Zambujeira do Mar, but usually Melides. Oh, the sea was cold, but we swam and swam like dolphins. I always loved to swim.”

      Inês paused, her thoughts lost in those faraway times and Sarah joined her there, in the wild, sparkling sea under the intense glare of the southern sun.

      “It was all so different when I married and moved to Porto. Grapes dictated the pace of life there, not cork; nearly everyone seemed to have something to do with producing the port wine. There were good times, too, though. One Easter, John and I joined a family party on their estate in the high Douro. The family booked an entire railway carriage to get there, and they even took their piano! You could do things like that, then.”

      An image of a baby grand balanced on the seats of an Intercity train to Manchester popped into Sarah’s mind, and she smiled to herself. These were the stories that she had grown up with and when she’d finally got there herself, she’d discovered the truth was twice as good. Portugal’s sounds and tastes had assailed her senses and overwhelmed her: the roar of the scooter engines that raced up and down Lisbon’s ancient streets; the pungent, exotic aroma of fresh coriander; the thick, sensual sweetness of sun-ripened peaches. And then love – the kind of love that tears the heart apart with its intensity, that makes the world turn faster, brighter.

      The sudden, harsh clatter of Inês’s teaspoon sliding from her saucer and onto the wooden floor was exacerbated by the deep silence that had preceded its descent. The discordant sound echoed Sarah’s emotions, the bittersweet nature of her Portuguese memories.

      She picked up the spoon and put it on the tray. “Is there anything else you’d like, before we go?” she asked.

      But Inês wasn’t listening, lingering as she was in decades past.

      “Of course, I was still very young when I moved away,’ she murmured, her voice and demeanour almost trance-like. “I had fallen in love with John, married him and moved to the north, all by the time I was twenty.” She pulled her shawl tighter around her as if suddenly cold although the temperature had not changed. “It’s strange to think now how little I knew him when I bound my life to his. The innocence of youth, I suppose.”

      Inês’s gaze wandered from the tall windows back to Sarah and she started slightly, as if surprised to find her still there. It seemed to remind her of something.

      “I have something that might help you, my dear,” she said.

      Sarah looked at her questioningly but said nothing, waiting patiently for Inês to carry on. Her speech was very slow these days.

      “My journal. It’s in my bedroom, next to my bed. Please take it, I’d like you to have it. I started it when I got engaged and kept it for a few years, writing in it regularly, until…” Inês stopped suddenly, as if unable to continue.

      “Until what?” probed Sarah, gently.

      “There are things in it you might find interesting,” Inês continued, ignoring Sarah’s question. “That might…” She trailed off again. Her eyes, seeking the light, returned to the tall windows and then her heavy lids closed over them as if it were too bright, too intense.

      “That might what?” asked Sarah, more urgently now.

      But Inês was silent, dozing in her chair, her hands fallen to her sides.

       2

       London, 2010

      The journal and what she would find in it absorbed Sarah’s thoughts as she put the children to bed and prepared supper that evening. She had found the volume exactly where Inês had said it would be; it was bound in thick leather that smelt richly of quality and heritage and Sarah had tucked it firmly into her handbag before gathering up the girls to leave. It would be useful if she were able to glean any information for her article from it, but the real reason she was so intrigued to read it was the feeling she had that Inês had something on her mind that Sarah needed to uncover – and soon, before her great age might cause her health to deteriorate.

      She hardly knew anything, she realised as she reflected, about Inês’s emotional life, which she had never really shared with Sarah. Inês had gifted to her great-niece the flavours of Portugal through her stews of pork and beans, her custard tarts and the fresh herbs she had grown herself. But she had disclosed little about matters of the heart, about her husband, John, who had died whilst Sarah was still a child. With the absence of information about Inês and John’s young life together, Sarah had only the photos in the family albums of a tall, strikingly handsome, athletic-looking man to go on, combined with the snippets of family legend she had heard over the years. So she had created her own impression, one in which Inês’s past belonged to a different age of chivalry and courtliness, in which she had met and married her knight in shining armour. Eventually, after unspoken acts of heroism and derring-do in the Second World War, John had brought his beautiful bride to England which had allowed her to be part of Sarah’s life.

      What must it have been like, Sarah mused as she chopped vegetables and peeled potatoes, to have come from the brightness and light of Portugal to cold and lonely war-damaged London, demeaned by rationing and belittled by years of conflict? So, so different from what Inês was used to it was a wonder she had survived the shock. It had been hard enough for Sarah to return to England after only half a year. What were the words Inês had used that afternoon? ‘The innocence of youth.’ Sarah had been innocent, too, when she first went to Inês’s homeland. Innocent – naïve, even – and inexperienced, but hungry for love, just like her great-aunt when she had met John. But her story hadn’t ended as Inês’s had; things had not worked out for her the way they had for Inês.

      Pouring herself a glass of wine and shoving the casserole in the oven, Sarah pulled the journal out of her bag and sat down to read.

      I am Inês Bretão and I am 18 years old (nearly 19). I live on a cork farm in the Alentejo region of Portugal with my mother and father and my younger brother and sister. I have one dog and three cats, and a pony called Pimento. Now that I am finally an adult and soon to be married, I feel like my СКАЧАТЬ