EG02 - The Lost Gardens

by Anthony Eglin

  ‘Are these old paintings you’re talking about? Like those up there?’ She pointed to the two eighteenth-century pictures on the facing wall.

  He turned to look at the paintings. ‘No, not as old as those.’

  ‘If this man has retained your services to locate his paintings, it suggests that they must be valuable. What are they worth?’

  ‘No specific price has been mentioned. But yes, in answer to your question, they are of considerable value.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid you may have come on a wild goose chase. The only paintings here,’ she gestured with a hand, ‘are the ones that you’re looking at.’

  He smiled thinly. ‘I’m afraid they are not the paintings in question, Miss Gibson.’ He got up and walked over to examine one of the gilt-framed oil portraits.

  ‘Well, I don’t know what more to tell you,’ said Jamie, raising her voice slightly. ‘I can assure you that there are no other paintings in the house. Everything was carefully inventoried after Ryder’s death and I would certainly have been made aware of any paintings like those you’ve described. I can’t believe for one moment that anyone, least of all the lawyers, would have made a mistake or concealed the fact.’

  He returned and stood by the edge of the sofa. By his expression, she could tell that he was not at all satisfied with her answer. He said nothing, just stood staring at her with those confounded eyes.

  Jamie was standing now. As far as she was concerned, the interview was over, coffee finished or not. She took two steps towards the door. ‘Anyway, Mr Fox, I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.’ She paused for moment. ‘I only wish they were here.’

  Jamie was fully expecting the man to thank her and politely leave but he didn’t. For an awkward moment they faced each other across the room.

  Then he spoke. ‘Look, Miss Gibson,’ he said, ‘I should have told you this earlier. Monsieur Girard does not have much longer to live, a few months at the most. He is a sick old man and I have promised him that I will do everything I can to find the paintings. They mean a lot to him and he wants to pass them on to his son. He told me he was a fool for not having settled the matter with Ryder long ago but, for whatever reason, he didn’t. Now he simply wants what is rightfully his.You must agree that is not too much to ask.’

  Jamie shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve told you everything I know.’

  ‘Much as I want to believe you, we know the paintings are here and not anywhere else. If you have any knowledge of them, please tell me now, it’ll save a lot of trouble for both of us.’

  Jamie pursed her lips. How many times did she have to tell him? ‘Look, I don’t know what more I can say. I’ve told you they’re not here. In any case, had it occurred to you that Ryder might have sold the paintings without Girard’s knowledge?’

  He smiled and shook his head. ‘There were safeguards against that ever happening.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Never mind, it’s not relevant. But take my word for it, Ryder could not sell the paintings without our knowing.’

  ‘Well, what more can I say, Mr Fox? If you’d like to talk to my lawyer, I’d be happy to give you his number.’

  He shook his head. ‘That won’t be necessary,’he said, offering his hand. ‘Thank you for seeing me.’

  ‘If they do turn up, naturally I’ll call you right away,’ she replied, shaking his hand. Together they walked to the front door where she watched him get into his car. With a quick wave of the hand from the open window, he drove off.

  Chapter Seven

  Driving back to Wickersham, Kingston was mulling over his visit to the Somerset Light Infantry Office. Jarvis had suggested that Kingston contact the Historical Disclosures Section of the Army Personnel Centre in Scotland, who, he said, might be able to give a more detailed account of Ryder’s military career.

  Kingston would do that in due course but from now on he would be best advised to proceed with Jamie’s blessing. Though they had developed what he felt to be an easygoing relationship he was, after all, an employee and he knew it was none of his business poking into her personal affairs. Besides, for all he knew she might prefer not knowing more about Ryder.

  When he arrived at the house, Jamie was waiting for him. She was fidgety and said little. They went into the kitchen where Kingston sat down, placing the bag containing the Amy Tan book and Jamie’s library book on the floor beside him. Before giving them to her, he decided to wait until he knew what was bothering her.

  She’d already made a pot of tea and poured him a cup without asking. It wasn’t like her. Had she somehow found out about his visit to the Light Infantry Office? Maybe Jarvis had called back? Then she proceeded to tell him about Fox’s visit.

  Kingston’s initial suggestion, that she should consider hiring a contractor to undertake a top to bottom search of the house and the cottages to look for the paintings, was met with a blank stare. She reasoned—and he had to admit that her argument was sound—that, even if Girard’s assertion that Ryder had stored the paintings in the house was true, by no means did it imply that they were still there. She reminded Kingston that half a century had passed since Ryder’s Paris days and a more likely scenario was that Ryder had either sold the paintings, or if that was not possible—as Fox contended—then they were simply moved elsewhere. ‘You’ve got to remember, Lawrence, all this took place long before I was born,’ she added.

  Up until now Kingston hadn’t thought about the age difference but Jamie’s comment made him pause. For most of her generation, the war in Europe had little or no meaning. Even the Vietnam war was probably not something that had played a significant part in her education, her upbringing. She saw these things from an entirely different perspective.

  ‘The whole idea of a search is silly, Lawrence.’

  ‘How about letting me take a look around?’

  His question was greeted with an amused look followed by a measured shaking of her head. ‘You’re incorrigible.’

  ‘Well, it couldn’t do any harm, could it?’

  She let out a sigh. ‘If that’s what you want to do, you have my blessing—on two conditions. One, you do it in your own time and two, stay out of my bedroom.’

  Kingston stood, about to leave, then remembered the books. He bent and picked up the bag. ‘I picked up another book for you,’ he said, handing her the bag. ‘Hope you haven’t read it.’

  She took the bag and removed the books, examining the Amy Tan cover. ‘No, I haven’t—thank you, Lawrence. What a kind thought,’ she said with a smile.

  For four days and nights, starting at the attic, Kingston conducted his search. Every break he had from the demands of the garden restoration he would return to the house. Every evening, he would do the same thing. Frequently on his hands and knees and often up on ladders, he went over every inch of the place like a man possessed. Occasionally, Jamie would watch with concealed amusement as Kingston systematically measured and remeasured, knocked on wall panels, cleared out bookcases, shone a flashlight in cupboards and pantries, even took up all the rugs, one by one, to examine the oak flooring planks. In the early evening of the fourth day, he was ready to admit defeat. If the paintings were in the house, it was doubtful that they would ever be found. Jamie opened a bottle of Veuve Clicquot that night as consolation.

  Next morning, good to his promise, Kingston took Jamie to see the gardens at Hidcote Manor. They left early enough in the morning to allow time for a stop in Chipping Campden first. Twenty minutes after their lunch at the Seymour House Hotel, Kingston and Jamie arrived at the fabled gardens near the northern border of Gloucestershire. They had struck lucky with the weather. Earlier that morning, the sky was overcast and now and again the windscreen wipers were called for. Now, with a blue sky cushioned with fluffy white clouds, it couldn’t be a better day for a garden visit.

  Standing in the rectangular gravel Garden Courtyard, they lingered a moment to admire the small chapel and the old butterscotch-coloured stone house, behind which lay what h
as long been considered the most influential garden in England.

  Kingston introduced Jamie to the head gardener, Peter Jenkins, and they chatted for a while about the project at Wickersham before entering the gardens. As they did so, the bell in the chapel chimed two thirty.

  Over lunch, Kingston had filled Jamie in on the history of the garden, starting with a short biography of its reclusive and unlikely creator.

  ‘He was American born but he became a naturalized British citizen soon after arriving at Hidcote,’ said Kingston. His name was Lawrence Johnston. Of all things, he was a career military man. Got to the rank of major, eventually. He and his well-heeled mother, Mrs Winthrop—she was twice widowed actually, one husband was a wealthy banker, I believe—arrived at Hidcote in 1907. Johnson was thirty-six at the time. It was an inhospitable piece of land. The three hundred acres of mostly windswept fields were awkwardly sloping and not at all suited to the cultivation of a garden. Plus, neither had any experience in gardening.’

  Jamie smiled. ‘Sounds a bit like me.’

  Kingston returned the smile. ‘You didn’t tell me about those two husbands!’

  ‘I will, one day,’ she replied.

  ‘So where was I? Oh, yes. Someone once commented that “with their peripatetic lifestyle, it seems unlikely that the two of them had ever stayed anywhere long enough to see a tree grow.” I thought that was a clever line.’ He paused. ‘But Lawrence Johnston was set on making a garden. In the seven years leading up to World War I, he worked tirelessly, planning and planting the beginnings of his garden. At the start of hostilities, he went off to the wars again—I forgot to mention, he had fought earlier in the Boer War. He was an officer in the Northumberland Fusiliers. Quite a hero, too—he was wounded twice, and once nearly buried alive.’

  ‘Good Lord! It’s a wonder he found any time for gardening. ’

  ‘I know, but it was in the years to follow that Hidcote really took shape, when he left the army. After the war, he came back to Hidcote and spent the next thirty-four years expanding and nurturing the gardens to their present glory: twenty-eight separate gardens within gardens spread over ten acres. In his later years, he turned the gardens and the house over to the National Trust.’

  ‘Sounds like he was what we call an “A” personality type.’

  Kingston shook his head. ‘On the contrary. He was not at all what one might expect. He was shy and modest and shunned publicity. But he had impeccable taste and over the years participated in several plant-hunting expeditions in various parts of the world. Several plants are named after him and the garden, the most famous, of course, being Hidcote lavender. It seemed he had very little interest in anything other than his garden.’

  ‘When did the National Trust take over?’

  ‘In the late forties. They’ve maintained it superbly ever since. He died in 1958 in Menton, France, where he had created another garden, Serre de la Madonne. He’s buried in a village churchyard a few miles from here, beside his mother.’

  ‘What an amazing story. They should make a film about it.’

  ‘You know, Jamie, Hidcote is a little like Wickersham in one respect.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘In the forty-plus years that Johnston gardened at Hidcote, he left no diaries, few letters and wrote no articles about his extraordinary creation. No plans of work in progress or finished designs, and no plant lists have ever surfaced.’

  Leaving the courtyard, they walked through a narrow blue-painted door into the Old Garden. Circled by old rosy brick walls the garden was a profusion of blue, white, pink and mauve from the exuberant plantings in five jam-packed long beds. Kingston pointed out campanulas, Cambridge Blue iris, hardy geraniums, anchusa, astrantia major and white philadelphus, as they ambled the grass and gravel paths that circled the garden.

  Next they entered the White Garden, a small symmetrical enclosure bounded by box hedging with stylized topiary birds. Here, all the plants were either grey or white. On to the Maple Garden with its feathery mounds of Acer palma-tum, Japanese maple, and stepping-stones set in gravel that led past a sunken stream with wands of Solomon’s seal and lush clumps of skunk cabbage.

  During the course of the next three hours, Kingston led Jamie through Hidcote’s breathtaking wonderland: the long and deep red borders crammed with spiky cordyline, crimson canna, cherry trees and dazzling oriental poppies; the magnificent and spacious Theatre Lawn with its formal clipped yew hedging and towering old beech tree; the Long Walk, a wide swath of mown grass flanked on either side by tall boxy hornbeam hedges leading to a wrought-iron gate through which they could see only sky and the farmlands beyond.

  They lingered in the serene Pool Garden with its large circular pool and central fountain surrounded by more cleverly clipped yew hedges and the large yew Palladian portico atop a flight of semicircular steps leading to a grassy roundel at the back. On to the formal Pillar Garden and the Stilt Garden where the intertwining branches of facing rows of hornbeam trees were clipped into overhead box shapes. Closing in on the three-hour mark they also managed to cover the magnificent Rose Borders, the Pine Garden with its rectangular lily pond, floods of agapanthus and spiny agaves, the Fuchsia Garden, the Poppy Garden, the Stream Garden, the Kitchen Garden and the Terrace Garden.

  With many parts of the garden left unseen, they finally decided to call it a day and retreat to the tea rooms for a rest before they took the long drive back to Wickersham.

  Jamie had long ago run out of superlatives and now fully understood what unerring taste, design skills, plantsman-ship, passion, drive and dogged persistence it required to create a garden like Hidcote. Back at the parking area, she got into the car, buoyed with a new enthusiasm and determination to shape her own gardens, hoping that one day, long into the future, they would attain the magnificence and breathtaking loveliness of those she’d seen today.

  Another week passed with the restoration proceeding at a brisk pace. Jamie was visibly pleased when Kingston told her that most of the clearing was now complete. The original network of gravel paths that crisscrossed the gardens—several thousand feet—was now identified. Locating them had been a slow and laborious process but without the aid of Gillian Thomas’s Ordnance Survey and tithe maps the task would have been nigh on impossible.

  The challenging problem of locating old drainage and water supply pipes, culverts and irrigation systems was made easier with the use of a metal detector. While it worked like a charm with the Victorian cast-iron and later date galvanized pipes, finding the earlier ceramic and clay pipes was very much a hit and miss affair.

  Over the past weeks Kingston had been interviewing a steady parade of gardeners. Now that all the clearing, grading and groundwork was done, more knowledgeable hands were soon going to be needed for planting, training, fertilizing, watering—all the myriad tasks required in the making and maintaining of a garden the size and scope of Wickersham.

  From information that Gillian had dug up, Kingston had learned that just after the turn of the century the garden staff had reached its peak of twenty-two persons. All lived locally, in nearby villages, a few in the then four cottages on the estate. As in many of the large estate gardens at the time, a strict Victorian caste system of employment was enforced where every man knew his place and his job. A gardener’s life at the time was quoted as being the equivalent to serfdom. Working hours were long and holidays few. When the weather was too bad for the gardeners to go outside, they were put to work making labels, mending tools and implements, scrubbing plant pots and cleaning the insides of the greenhouses.

  All the garden staff had to wear a clean collar and tie, waistcoat, cap to doff with, and a serge apron with large pockets known as ‘brats’. All these were required to be worn daily, even when working in hot weather or in the boiler house. No smoking was permitted and more often than not, each gardener had to purchase his own knives for such tasks as budding and light pruning. A member of a glasshouse team could rise to become a head gardener, where
as those who worked in the kitchen garden and pleasure gardens could only aspire to the middle ranks. The Victorian head gardener was as strict a disciplinarian as any regimental sergeant major and he was given a house or cottage and all his coal and vegetables for free. Invariably, he would have risen through the ranks from under-gardener, journeyman gardener, to foreman, gaining many years of experience along the way before attaining the important and influential role as head gardener.

  Word about the restoration had got around quickly and on most fair weather days a small gallery of locals would show up, curious to check up on the progress. It reminded Kingston of city construction sites where the contractors drilled peepholes in the barricades so that passers-by could observe the show.

  In the course of his interviews with prospective gardeners and labourers, Kingston was pleasantly surprised and encouraged that many of the job-seekers were not only young but well qualified—some with degrees in garden design and horticulture—and all eager to take on the hard work and long hours that would be demanded of them. In his day, it had been hard to get youngsters interested in gardening. To start with he hired a staff of seven—two men with considerable journeyman experience, a young man and two young women with some horticultural training, and two local lads as labourers.

  A giant cat’s cradle of pegs and strings outlining beds and borders was strung out in various parts of the garden. Many of the beds were already double-dug with manure and other additions worked in to enrich the soil.

  The one-acre walled vegetable and cutting flower garden that not too many weeks ago had resembled an overgrown bombsite was starting to take shape. The nine-foot high brick wall on two sides, preserved in remarkable condition, had been cleared of all weeds, brambles and ivy and had been high-pressure washed. On sections of the inside wall, espalier and cordon wires were in place for the apple and pear trees waiting in the wings. The three glasshouses were in various stages of completion and all the cold frames and rehabilitated Victorian cloches were painted and ready to go. Outside the walls several bonfires burned, the smouldering ashes rekindled every morning with an inexhaustible supply of fuel hacked and sawn from the jungle-like gardens.