THE TRYSTING TREE by Linda Gillard Read Free Book Online Page A

grandmother and I were investigating when she died.’
    ‘What a shame,’ Phoebe said. ‘And I suppose a lot of information died with her?’
    ‘More than you might think. Much of the archive was destroyed. There was a fire, you see…’

IVY
     
    24 th November, 2013
     
    Ivy Watson threw another log on to the dying fire and replaced the fireguard. Turning, she picked her way carefully through the photo albums, letters and postcards strewn on the floor of her small sitting room and settled down again in her armchair. She lifted one of the old albums on to her lap and turned its heavy, ornamented pages. Connor had said he needed more photos to scan, partly to preserve them, but also to help him plan the book. He’d asked her to choose her favourites.
    It was a pleasant job for a winter’s afternoon, but Ivy felt guilty dismantling the family albums Hester had made. Connor had shown her how to keep track of where the photos came from. When she removed a photo, she used two coloured bits of sticky paper, both with the same number written on them. One went on the back of the photo, the other filled the gap in the album. It was a simple system and one that Ivy’s old, arthritic fingers could manage. Nowadays writing anything was a trial, so it was kind and clever of Connor to have thought of an easy way to keep the precious albums in order.
    She decided he must have a picture of the old beech, the Trysting Tree. Hester had loved that tree and there were many photos of it, taken in all seasons. One of them showed the graffiti in close-up. Generations of gardeners and housemaids had carved their brief and cryptic declarations of love on its smooth bark, but someone – an educated man, evidently – had carved a Latin inscription: Crescent illae crescetis amores. Ivy didn’t know what the words meant, but she guessed amores was something to do with love. Connor had studied Latin at school and might be interested in deciphering the inscription, so she removed the photo of the beech, making sure she didn’t bend it with her clumsy fingers.
    As she extracted the corners from the small card triangles holding the photo in place, Ivy saw an envelope had been tucked behind. As she turned it over, she was astonished to see the envelope was addressed to Ivy Hatherwick . Until her marriage, Ivy had been known as Ivy Mordaunt. Ivy Hatherwick had been her name before she was adopted as an infant by Hester Mordaunt.
    Curious now, she opened the envelope and removed a single sheet of notepaper. At once she recognised her Uncle William’s handwriting and noted that the letter had been written the day before he died. Ivy settled back in her armchair, but she’d read no more than a few lines when she suddenly shot forward, her hand covering her mouth. As she continued to read, her eyes widened and she emitted a small whimpering noise. When she’d finished reading, Ivy crumpled the letter into a ball, held it tightly in her fist for a moment, then threw it on the floor. She leaned back, clutching the arms of her chair and wept for a long time.
    After she’d composed herself, she bent down, her breathing still unsteady, and retrieved the letter. She spread it out on her lap and read the words again, hoping they might have changed, that she had been dreaming, that her aged brain had simply misunderstood. But the words remained the same and there was no other construction she could put upon them.
    Ivy got to her feet and staggered towards the fireplace. Setting the fireguard aside, she threw the letter on to the fire and watched it burn. When there was nothing left and the flames had died down, she turned and surveyed the family archive spread out on the floor and dining table. She bent down and grabbed some letters and photographs and hurled them onto the fire. As she gathered up the orderly piles of photos and consigned them to the blaze, she began to weep again, but she stood and watched as the photos buckled, then burst into